Hours Needed for Income Calculator NZ
When you work for yourself, an income target is easy to name and harder to turn into a working week. The figure you want to live on is what is left after income tax, the ACC earners' levy and, if you have one, your student loan, and all of those come out of profit, which is what is left after your business costs. This hours needed for income calculator works backwards from the take-home amount you want to the billable hours a week that will produce it. You enter your take-home target for the year, your hourly rate, your annual business costs, the weeks you expect to work and whether you repay a student loan. The calculator finds the profit before tax that leaves exactly your target, adds your costs to give the revenue you must invoice, and divides by your rate to give the billable hours in a year and in an average working week. Use it to test a rate before you quote it, to see what a holiday or a quieter month asks of the rest of the year, or to check whether a target fits the hours you can sell. The hours are billable hours only, so add your admin and other unbilled time on top. Tax figures are those for the 2026/27 tax year.
From the same team as Calculate.co.nz
Your Timesheets at jobtracker.co.nz logs your hours on a week grid or a timer that keeps counting when your phone locks, free on every plan. Career and Timesheets turns those hours into projects and rates, fixed fees and retainers, numbered invoices with GST only when you are registered, expenses and mileage, and the tax to set aside, from $4.99 a month billed yearly.
Log your hours freeThis treats the business as your only income and applies no tax credits. Self-employed people also pay an ACC work levy that depends on their classification unit; it is not included here.
How it works
Your take-home is your profit less income tax, the ACC earners' levy and, if you tick it, student loan repayments. Income tax uses the 2026/27 individual rates, from 10.5% on the first $15,600 to 39% on income over $180,000. The earners' levy is 1.75% of profit up to $156,641, and student loan repayments are 12% of profit over $24,128. Because those come out at different rates on different slices of income, the calculator searches for the profit whose take-home equals your target, narrowing the range by halves until it is exact to well under a cent. Your business costs are added to that profit to give the revenue you need to invoice, excluding GST. Dividing the revenue by your hourly rate gives the billable hours in a year, and dividing those by the weeks you work gives the hours in an average week.
Worked example
A sole trader wants to take home $80,000 a year, charges $95 an hour, has $6,000 of business costs and works 46 weeks a year, with no student loan. A profit of $107,092 leaves exactly the target: income tax on it is $25,217.84 and the ACC earners' levy is $1,874.11. Adding the costs, they need to invoice $113,092, which at $95 an hour is 1,190.4 billable hours a year, or 25.9 a week. With a student loan the same target needs a profit of $125,788 and 30.2 billable hours a week.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Profit before tax | $107,092 |
| Less income tax | $25,217.84 |
| Less ACC earners' levy at 1.75% | $1,874.11 |
| Take-home | $80,000 |
| Plus business costs | $6,000 |
| Revenue to invoice (excl. GST) | $113,092 |
| Billable hours a year at $95 | 1,190.4 |
| Billable hours a week over 46 weeks | 25.9 |
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