Income tax

Five brackets, and only the top slice pays the higher rate

Income tax in Slovenia (dohodnina) on employment income is progressive across five brackets, running 16 % → 26 % → 33 % → 39 % → 50 %. The point people most often get wrong is that these are marginal rates: each rate applies only to the slice of income that falls inside its own band, never to the whole salary at once. Moving into a higher bracket never re-taxes the euros you already earned below the threshold — only the part above it is taxed at the higher rate.

Because this calculator is monthly, it works on the monthly version of the scale. Your employer withholds the tax as an advance (akontacija dohodnine) each month on one-twelfth of the annual thresholds, and the year is squared up in the annual assessment. Those annual thresholds are re-indexed every year, so the whole scale shifts with them.

The base is not the gross — it is the gross minus contributions and allowances

The number those bands are applied to is not your gross salary. Two things come off first. Social-security contributions — 23,1 % of the gross on the employee side — are deducted in full, and every one of them, including the long-term-care contribution, reduces the taxable amount. Then the allowances (olajšave) are subtracted. What is left is the income-tax base (osnova za dohodnino), and only that smaller figure is run through the five brackets. So the headline salary is never taxed directly; the tax is worked out on the base after contributions and allowances.

The general allowance — and why a lower earner keeps more

The largest allowance is the general personal allowance (splošna olajšava), which everyone in employment receives. Its basic monthly amount is 462,66 €. What makes Slovenia unusual is that the allowance is income-dependent: below a gross-pay threshold of 1.480,51 € a month the basic amount is topped up by an additional part that falls linearly as the salary rises. In other words, a lower earner receives a larger general allowance, which is trimmed away as pay climbs until, at the threshold, only the basic amount is left. Above the threshold every employee gets the same basic 462,66 €. This taper is why two people on different salaries can have quite different tax bases even before any children are counted, and why a modest pay rise near the threshold can feel as if the tax has bitten harder than expected.

Allowances for dependent family members

On top of the general allowance, an employee supporting dependants reduces the base further. The allowance for dependent children is summed by birth order and grows steeply with each additional child: 249,65 € a month for the first child, 271,40 € for the second, 452,67 € for the third, 633,94 € for the fourth and 815,21 € for the fifth, then 181,27 € more for each further child. Another dependent family member carries 249,65 € a month, and a child needing special care carries 904,69 € — a figure that has not been through our final sign-off. People under 29 also qualify for a separate young-worker allowance, covered on the allowances page. All of these are subtracted from the base before the brackets apply, so a family with several children can pay markedly less tax than a single employee on the same gross.

The rates, brackets and allowances on this page follow the income-tax act cited above; a recent change may not be reflected here yet, and none of them has been through our final sign-off, so they must not be used for real tax decisions.

The full content of this page is still being written.