Salary to Subby Calculator: What Rate Do You Actually Need to Go ABN?

Going from a wage to ABN is one of the biggest financial decisions you’ll make as a tradie. Get the maths right and you’ll be better off. Get it wrong and you’ll be working harder for less — and wondering why you bothered.

The problem is most tradies compare their hourly subby rate to their hourly wage rate and assume they’re ahead. They’re not. Because when you go ABN, your employer stops paying a stack of things on top of your wage — and that cost lands squarely on you.

This is where a salary to subby calculator becomes essential. Instead of guessing, you can work out the exact rate you need to charge to match — or beat — what you’re earning now.

Why Your Wage Rate and Your Subby Rate Are Not the Same Thing

Here’s the thing your future principal contractor won’t spell out for you: they’re paying your wages plus a lot more on top. When you move to ABN, all of that disappears — and you need to recover it through your rate.

Here’s what typically sits on top of your base wage as an employee:

• Superannuation (11.5%): Your employer currently puts 11.5 cents on top of every dollar you earn. As an ABN subby, you pay that yourself — or skip it and shortchange your future.
• Annual leave (4 weeks): That’s roughly 7.7% of your annual pay you’re getting for doing nothing. On ABN, there’s no paid leave.
• Personal/sick leave (10 days): Employed tradies get 10 days a year. As a subby, every sick day is unpaid.
• Public holidays: Approximately 10 days a year you’re currently getting paid without working. Factor those in.
• Overtime and penalty rates: Many award-covered tradies get penalty rates for early starts or Saturdays. ABN rates are typically flat.

Stack all of that up and you’re looking at your employer spending roughly 25–30% on top of your base wage to keep you on the books. So if you’re earning $45/hr as a wage employee, you actually cost your employer closer to $57–$58/hr all in.

That’s the floor your ABN rate needs to sit above — before you even factor in your own running costs.

How the Salary to Subby Calculation Works

A proper salary to subby calculator works backwards from what you need to take home and adds up all the loadings you’re no longer getting from an employer.

Here’s the basic formula:

1. Start with your target annual income (what you want to clear after tax)
2. Gross it up for tax
3. Add superannuation (11.5%)
4. Add leave loading equivalent — annual leave plus personal leave
5. Add public holidays
6. Divide by your actual billable hours per year (not 52 weeks × 40hrs — more on that below)

The Boss Tradie Subby to Salary Calculator works from the opposite direction — it takes your subby rate and shows what salary equivalent you’re earning. If you’re coming from a salary and want to know the minimum rate you need to charge, you’re essentially doing the reverse calculation. You can use it to check whether any rate you’re offered actually stacks up against what you’re leaving behind.

The Billable Hours Problem — Where Most Tradies Get Burned

Here’s the part everyone forgets: you won’t bill 40 hours a week as a subby. Not even close.

Factor in:

• Quoting and admin time — if you’re running your own work pipeline
• Travel between jobs — often unbillable depending on your arrangement
• Wet days or shutdown periods on construction sites
• Downtime between contracts — gaps happen, especially in the first year
• Time spent on invoicing, chasing payment, and compliance

Most sole operator tradies are realistically billing somewhere between 1,400 and 1,600 hours per year — not the theoretical 2,080 hours a full-time employee works.

That gap is massive. If you’re basing your rate on 2,000 billable hours but only billing 1,500, you’ve effectively cut your hourly rate by 25% before you’ve started. Run different scenarios through the Advanced Tradie Calculator to see exactly how billable hours affect your real earnings position.

What the Numbers Actually Look Like — A Real Example

Let’s walk through a real example. Say you’re currently employed as a sparky earning $42/hr on a standard 38-hour week — roughly $83,000 gross per year.

Step 1: What do you need to gross to match that after tax?
Let’s target $83,000 gross (same as now). That’s your starting point.

Step 2: Add super (11.5%)
$83,000 × 1.115 = $92,545. This is what you need before super comes out.

Step 3: Add annual and personal leave (≈10%)
$92,545 × 1.10 = $101,800. Now you’re covering your leave entitlements.

Step 4: Add public holidays (≈4%)
$101,800 × 1.04 = $105,872. You’re now at the equivalent of your total employment cost.

Step 5: Divide by realistic billable hours (1,500)
$105,872 ÷ 1,500 = $70.58/hr

That’s your break-even ABN rate just to match your current employment income — before you’ve spent a dollar on tools, insurance, your ute, accounting, or anything else.

At $42/hr employed, you need at least $70–$75/hr ABN just to be in the same position. Many tradies going out at $55–$60/hr think they’re ahead because it’s more than their wage rate. The maths says they’re going backwards.

Business Costs You Still Need to Cover

Once you’ve got your break-even rate, you need to layer in your overhead costs. As an ABN subby or sole trader, you’ll typically be wearing:

• Public liability insurance: $1,000–$2,500/year depending on trade and turnover
• Income protection insurance: Essential if you’re the only earner — don’t skip it
• Tools and equipment: Maintenance, replacement, calibration
• Vehicle costs: Fuel, rego, insurance, tyres, servicing
• Accounting and bookkeeping: $2,000–$4,000/year for a decent accountant who actually understands tradies
• Licences and compliance: Annual renewals, CPD requirements, white cards
• Mobile, software and apps: Job management, invoicing, time tracking

Add all of that up and you’re typically looking at $15,000–$30,000 in annual overheads depending on your trade and setup. Spread across 1,500 billable hours, that adds another $10–$20/hr to your required rate.

So that sparky who needed $70/hr to break even on income? Their real minimum viable rate, once business costs are included, is closer to $85–$90/hr. And that’s still not paying them anything above their old employment income — it’s just matching it.

When Going Subby Actually Makes Sense

Going ABN isn’t inherently better or worse than employment — it depends entirely on what rate you can command and how consistently you can fill your calendar.

It makes strong financial sense when:

• The market rate for your trade sits well above your personal break-even (ideally 30–40% above)
• You have reliable, contracted work lined up — not just a verbal from a builder
• You’ve run the full calculation and you’re genuinely ahead after all costs and tax
• The flexibility, autonomy, or growth upside has real value to you beyond the dollars

It’s a bad deal when you’re chasing a modest rate bump without understanding the full picture. Plenty of tradies have gone ABN at $65/hr thinking they’ve cracked it, only to realise at tax time they’re worse off than when they were on the tools as an employee at $43/hr.

Run the Numbers Before You Make the Move

The salary to subby calculation isn’t complicated — but most tradies skip it and go on gut feel. That’s how you end up three years in on ABN wondering where all the money went.

Use the Boss Tradie Subby to Salary Calculator to check any ABN rate you’re offered against your current package. Plug in your subby rate and it’ll show you the salary equivalent in seconds — so you know immediately whether the move is worth making. For a full breakdown including your business overheads and target take-home, the Advanced Tradie Calculator will give you the complete picture.

Know your numbers. Then make the call.