The Redundancy Pay Calculator estimates statutory redundancy pay under two systems: the United Kingdom's age-banded weeks-of-pay formula, and Australia's National Employment Standards (NES) scale with its notice periods and genuine-redundancy tax-free limit. Select the region, enter age, years of service, and weekly pay, and it returns the weeks, the gross amounts, and the tax-free and taxable split.
How It Works
United Kingdom: each completed year of service (up to 20) is weighted by your age in that year: half a week's pay per year worked under 22, one week per year from 22 to 40, and one and a half weeks per year at 41 and over, counted backwards from your current age:
Australia: the NES scale sets severance weeks by years of service (4 weeks at 1 to 2 years rising to 16 weeks at 9 to 10 years, then 12 weeks at 10 or more), notice adds 1 to 4 weeks by service plus one extra week for employees 45 or older with at least 2 years' service, and the genuine-redundancy tax-free limit is the calculator's stored base of 6,264 per completed year.
Parameters
| Input | Required | Meaning | |---|---|---| | Region | Yes | United Kingdom or Australia | | Age | Yes | Your age (UK banding; AU notice uplift) | | Years of service | Yes | Completed years (UK needs at least 2) | | Weekly pay | Yes | Gross weekly pay | | Small business (AU) | No | Under 15 employees: NES severance generally exempt | | Include notice (AU) | No | Adds NES notice pay | | Unused leave (AU) | No | Dollar amount added to the total |
Worked examples
United Kingdom: a 45-year-old with 10 completed years of service and £700 weekly pay. Counting backwards, five service years fall at ages 41 to 45 (5 x 1.5 = 7.5 weeks) and five at ages 36 to 40 (5 x 1 = 5 weeks): 12.5 weeks, £8,750 of statutory redundancy pay, inside the £30,000 tax-free allowance the calculator reports. The banding is why two colleagues with identical service and pay receive different amounts: the older worker's years are weighted at the top rate, deliberately, because re-employment takes longer later in a career. Australia: six years of service, 16,500**); notice is 4 weeks plus the over-45 week, 5 weeks (**24,000 combined sits under the tax-free limit of 6,264 = 0, and any unused leave entered is added to the total on top (leave is paid but is not part of the tax-free redundancy computation in this model).
The quirks worth knowing before you rely on either system
The UK's statutory scheme also caps a week's pay (the cap is uprated each April): this calculator multiplies the weekly pay you enter, so if your pay exceeds the current statutory cap, enter the capped amount for a statutory estimate, and remember contractual or enhanced schemes often pay more and ignore the cap entirely. UK entitlement also requires two years' continuous service in England, Scotland, and Wales, and pays only for genuine redundancy, not dismissal for other reasons. Australia's scale has its own famous anomaly the table makes visible: severance peaks at 16 weeks for 9 to 10 years and falls to 12 weeks at 10 years and beyond, a historical artifact of how the standard was set, and the small-business exemption removes NES severance entirely for employers under 15 staff, which is a fact about your employer, not your service. In both countries the estimate is the statutory floor: awards, enterprise agreements, and contracts frequently sit above it.
Tax treatment, carefully separated
The calculator separates the payment into components because tax does. In the UK, redundancy pay and other termination payments share a £30,000 tax-free threshold in total (notice pay, taxed as earnings since the PENP rules, is outside it, and this calculator's UK mode models the severance itself). In Australia, a genuine redundancy's tax-free component (the base-plus-per-year formula) is exempt; amounts above it form an employment termination payment taxed at concessional rates subject to caps, unused leave is taxed under its own rules, and none of it is available if the payment is a resignation or a dismissal dressed as redundancy, the ATO's genuine-redundancy conditions (role truly abolished, consultation requirements met, no rehire arrangement) are the gate. Superannuation is not part of either calculation.
Limitations
A statutory-floor estimate for the two stored systems. It does not model enhanced or contractual schemes, awards and enterprise agreements (AU), the UK weekly-pay cap (enter the capped figure yourself), notice in the UK mode, PILON and PENP mechanics, or individual tax positions, and its stored figures (the £30,000 threshold, the Australian base and per-year amounts) belong to their current indexed periods. Redundancy situations are time-sensitive and fact-specific; verify with the relevant authority (gov.uk, the Fair Work Ombudsman) or an employment professional before acting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the older of two identical-service employees get more in the UK?
Because the UK formula weights each service year by the age at which it was worked, up to 1.5 weeks per year at 41 and over. The policy reason is re-employment difficulty; the arithmetic consequence is that the same 10 years can be worth 10 weeks to a younger leaver and 12.5 to the example above.
I have 12 years of service in Australia. Why is my severance lower than a 9-year colleague's?
You have spotted the NES scale's genuine anomaly: 9 to 10 years attracts 16 weeks, 10 years and over attracts 12 weeks. It is in the standard itself, not a calculator error. Your longer-service colleague comparison may change once notice and any award or agreement terms are included, which is why the calculator displays the whole scale with your row marked.
Is redundancy pay taxable?
Partly, depending on the system and the amount: the first £30,000 of UK termination payments is generally tax-free, and Australian genuine redundancy is tax-free up to the base-plus-years limit the calculator computes. Amounts above those limits are taxable, and components like notice and leave have their own treatments, which is why the components are reported separately.