Where does your tax go?
An itemised receipt for the income tax you pay. Hospitals, NZ Super, schools, debt interest. Type a salary, see your share. Treasury's Budget 2026 figures.
Looking at how NZ's tax splits between running and building? See the national spending split →
YOUR RECEIPT
Type your salary. The receipt updates.
We use the same PAYE engine that powers our take-home calculator. The income tax figure is split across categories using each category's share of forecast core Crown expenses for 2026/27.
STEP ONE
STEP TWO
Your estimated income tax
A year
$9,701
A week
$187
Effective
16.2%
Top marginal rate on the last dollar: 30%.
BETTERMONEY — TAXPAYER RECEIPT
Forecast 2026/27 · core Crown expenses
INCOME TAX TOTAL
$9,700.50
THE TAKEAWAY
The biggest single slice is health at $2,145. Health, welfare and NZ Super together account for $5,499 of your income tax — roughly 57%.
HOW WE WORK IT OUT
Method, in plain English.
Step one — your income tax. We feed your salary into the same PAYE engine that powers the BetterMoney take-home calculator. That uses IRD's resident tax rates for 2026/27, including the Independent Earner Tax Credit where it applies. We strip ACC, KiwiSaver and student loan — this is income tax only.
Step two — the allocation. We take that income tax figure and split it across the nine spending categories Treasury publishes in Budget at a Glance 2026. Each category gets its share of forecast core Crown expenses. The dollars on every line add up to the income tax total.
What's left out. This is your income tax receipt. GST, fuel taxes, road user charges, company tax and council rates are real taxes too — they fund a meaningful share of what the government spends — and they aren't in this number. A total-tax-footprint mode is on the roadmap.
A note on accuracy. Government funding doesn't really work line-by-line. In practice the Crown pools all tax revenue and spends from it. The receipt is a useful frame for understanding scale, not a literal trace of your specific dollars.
Read the underlying rates and brackets in our NZ tax brackets guide.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
What does this tool actually calculate?
It takes your gross salary, runs it through our existing PAYE calculator to work out how much income tax you'd pay over a year, then allocates that dollar figure across spending categories using each category's share of forecast core Crown expenses for the 2026/27 fiscal year.
Why doesn't the receipt include GST, fuel taxes, or rates?
This is your income tax receipt — PAYE only. GST, fuel taxes, road user charges, company tax, and local council rates are real taxes you pay too. A 'total tax footprint' mode is on the roadmap.
Are these figures official?
The spending categories and dollar amounts come from The Treasury's Budget at a Glance 2026 (Crown copyright, CC BY 4.0). The income tax calculation uses IRD's published resident rates for 2026/27. We don't invent figures.
How accurate is this?
It's a notional allocation, not a literal tracing of your dollars. In reality, government spending is funded from many tax sources combined. The receipt shows what your income tax contribution would buy if it were apportioned by Crown spending share — a useful frame, not a precise accounting.
Source: The Treasury, Budget at a Glance 2026, fiscal year 2026/27. Crown copyright, CC BY 4.0. treasury.govt.nz. Tax brackets and IETC: Inland Revenue, resident rates 2026/27.
Educational content · not financial advice