Long Service Leave (LSL) Calculator Australia.

Pro rata long service leave is a proportional payout of long service leave before you reach the full qualifying period, paid when your employment ends. Instead of waiting for the full entitlement (10 years in most states, 7 years in Victoria and the ACT), you receive a fraction based on the years you actually completed. It is generally available from 7 years of continuous service, though the trigger varies by state: some pay pro rata on any termination, others only when you resign because of illness, injury or domestic necessity, or where the employer ends the job. The reason you left often decides whether you are paid at all: our pro-rata long service leave guide sets out the threshold and the conditions for all 8 states and territories. Check your state and estimate the amount with the calculator above.

In Victoria and the ACT you reach a full long service leave entitlement after 7 years of continuous service. In most other states the full entitlement is at 10 years, but a pro-rata payout is generally available from 7 years if your employment ends. So 7 years is a meaningful milestone almost everywhere, either as a full entitlement or as a pro-rata payout on termination. Check your state with the calculator above.

At the ten-year mark the amounts diverge sharply: 13 weeks in South Australia and the Northern Territory against 8.67 weeks in NSW, Queensland, WA and Tasmania, which is a difference of thousands of dollars for the identical decade of work. Our guide to long service leave after 10 years gives the figure for all eight jurisdictions and converts it into dollars.

A long service leave payout is not taxed at a single rate. ATO Schedule 7 splits the payment by when the service was performed and taxes each slice under the rules that applied at the time. Service before 16 August 1978 has only 5% of that portion included in your assessable income. Service from 16 August 1978 to 17 August 1993 is capped at 30% plus the 2% Medicare levy. Service from 18 August 1993 is taxed at your marginal rate on an ordinary resignation, or capped at 30% plus Medicare if the payment is because of a genuine redundancy, invalidity or an early retirement scheme.

The widely repeated claim that long service leave is taxed at a flat 32% is wrong twice over: that figure is 30% plus the Medicare levy, and the 30% is a ceiling, not a fixed rate, so anyone whose marginal rate is below 30% pays less. Work out the split and what you actually keep with the long service leave tax calculator.

If you work in building and construction, the continuous-service rule above may not be the one that matters to you. Every state and territory runs a portable long service leave scheme for the industry, where service accrues with the industry rather than a single employer, so moving between builders does not reset the clock. Employers pay a levy to the scheme instead of carrying the liability themselves.

The scheme is a separate entitlement under a separate Act, and you cannot be paid twice for the same period. The portable scheme directory covers all eight jurisdictions, and portable long service leave in Queensland has its own guide. The most common way workers lose out is unrecorded service, so ask your scheme for a statement annually rather than at the point you want to claim.

Continuous service is unbroken service with one employer, and it is what your long service leave is built on. Paid leave (annual, personal, long service) counts as service. Periods of unpaid parental leave or other authorised unpaid leave usually do not add to your total but do not break continuity. A genuine transfer of business can carry your service across to the new employer.

Casual service counts in every state and territory, but the test for whether it is continuous differs. Queensland ends continuous service after a break of more than 3 months between contracts, and Tasmania deems a casual continuously employed when they regularly work at least 32 hours in each 4-week period. The phrase "regular and systematic" defines a casual employee only in the ACT. In Victoria and Western Australia it is one of several ways a casual keeps continuity across a gap, and the long service leave rules in the other five jurisdictions do not use it. Our guide do casuals get long service leave compares the continuity test, the pay method and the casual loading rule for all eight.