Base salary alone misses 20-40% of an offer's real value: super, packaging, bonus likelihood, leave, commute. Two offers can have the same base but a $15,000+ annual gap — and a $140,000 retirement-balance gap over 30 years.
Base salary, super %, bonus, salary packaging, leave, commute — all six variables that move the needle. ATO Stage 3 brackets applied. 100% client-side.
Three common job-comparison patterns where the "obvious" higher offer is not actually the better offer. Numbers calculated with the same engine used above.
| Scenario | Job A | Job B | Real-dollar verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| The super trap $100k base + 13% super vs $105k base + 12% super | $100k + 13% | $105k + 12% | Job A wins by $40k over 30 yrs |
| The bonus mirage $130k flat vs $115k + $30k bonus at 50% likelihood | $130k flat | $115k + $30k×50% | Job A wins by $9,500/yr |
| The healthcare packaging edge $120k private + 12% super vs $108k public hospital + 12% super + $9k packaging | $120k private | $108k hospital | Job B wins by $1,800/yr |
Scenarios assume Sydney/Melbourne metro, single, no dependants, full-year employment. Run your own numbers above for an exact answer.
The job comparison engine deliberately leaves these out so the verdict stays clean. If either offer hits one of these thresholds, run that specific calculator with the bigger of the two salaries you just compared.
At a $100,000 base salary, 1% extra super = $1,000 per year. Invested at a real (post-inflation) return of 7% over 30 years, that compounds to roughly $94,400 in additional retirement balance — and that is real spending power at retirement, not nominal dollars. Many job comparisons quote only base salary and miss this entirely. If you are choosing between two offers $5,000 apart on base but 1% apart on super at $100k+, the higher-super offer is almost always worth more in lifetime terms.
FBT (Fringe Benefits Tax) exemption lets certain employer categories pay part of your salary as non-taxable benefits. Public hospital, public ambulance, and not-for-profit hospital employees can package up to $9,010 of general benefits per FBT year, plus $2,650 of meal entertainment and venue hire. Registered public benevolent institution (PBI) and health promotion charity employees can package up to $15,900 + $2,650. The tax saving equals the packaged amount multiplied by your marginal tax rate — at the 37% bracket, a $9,010 healthcare packaging cap saves roughly $3,300 per year. Source: ATO Fringe Benefits Tax — exempt benefits. Verify your specific employer's status with your payroll team before signing.
Discount the bonus by the likelihood you will actually receive the full amount. Most company bonus schemes pay 50-80% of target on average across all employees and years. The calculator lets you set a likelihood percentage explicitly — if you think you have a 50% chance of hitting the full $20,000 bonus, the expected value is $10,000 and that is what should be compared to the higher base salary. Also factor in tax: bonuses are taxed at your marginal rate through PAYG withholding, so a $20,000 bonus to someone in the 37% bracket nets roughly $12,600, not $20,000.
The calculator values each annual leave day above the legislated 20-day minimum at your daily rate (base salary ÷ 260 working days per year). A job offering 25 days versus 20 days at $100,000 base is worth roughly $1,920 more per year. Leave loading (the extra 17.5% paid on top of base for leave taken, common in awards and EBAs) is not modelled in V1 — if your award includes it, add roughly 1.4% to the base salary of the affected role manually before entering.
The calculator deliberately quantifies only the financial side. The qualitative side — manager quality, team culture, learning trajectory, work-from-home flexibility, commute time, career runway — usually decides whether a job change is right, not the dollar gap. Use the calculator output as one input into the decision: if the dollar gap is small in either direction (say under $5,000/year), the qualitative factors should dominate. If the gap is large in one direction (over $15,000/year), it usually outweighs all but the most extreme qualitative differences.