How the numbers work

Here is exactly what the calculator does. No hidden weighting.

Gross college cost

Annual fees times the number of training years. Plus each exam fee times the number of attempts you enter. Plus one-off fees like registration and Fellowship entry, if you leave that switched on. Everything uses 2026 fees for every year. I don’t guess at future rises.

For RACS, the annual fee is the RACS share plus your specialty’s share.

Years assumed

The defaults are RACP 6 (3 basic, 3 advanced), RACS 5, RACGP 3, ACEM 5, ANZCA 5, RANZCOG 6, RANZCP 5 and ACRRM 4. The RANZCP and ACRRM lengths are my assumption, not confirmed by the college. These are typical minimums. Change them to match you. Part-time training is charged differently by most colleges and isn’t modelled.

Resits

A resit adds the exam fee again. The resit table on each college page also shows a second number with one extra year of annual fees added. That extra year is my assumption. Whether a fail actually costs you a year depends on when the exam runs and your college’s rules.

Employer allowance

Allowance per year times your training years, then reduced by your marginal tax rate, because the allowance is taxable income. So allowance after tax = allowance × years × (1 − tax rate). It assumes you get the registrar rate every year, which won’t be true in early basic training for some states.

Tax deduction effect

Gross college cost × your marginal tax rate. It’s a rough guide to what claiming the fees might save you. It ignores the Medicare levy, the timing of when you pay, and any part of a fee that was reimbursed. See the tax checklist.

Rough net cost

Gross college cost, minus allowance after tax, minus the tax deduction effect. It can go below zero when the allowance is bigger than the fees.

What’s left out

Sources by college

The tags

official came from the college, a government page or the agreement. archived came from an official page saved on the Wayback Machine. third-party came from someone else’s summary. unverified I haven’t checked yet. Each tag shows the date I last checked it.

Found a wrong number? Email me