Nanny Share Payroll: How to Split Wages, Tax and Super Between Two Families

A nanny share can be one of the best childcare decisions a family makes. You get one-on-one attention for your kids, some company for the nanny, and a price tag that's a lot easier to swallow than solo care. But ask any family who's actually done one, and they'll tell you the childcare part is rarely the hard bit. The hard bit is working out what happens on payday.

Two families, one nanny, and suddenly you've got two sets of payroll obligations to think about. Get it wrong and you could end up with underpaid tax, missed super, or a very awkward conversation about who owes what. Get it right, and it barely takes any more effort than employing a nanny on your own.

What is a nanny share, exactly?

At its simplest, a nanny share is when two families use the same nanny, either together or split across different days. Some families run it as one nanny caring for both sets of kids at once, say Monday to Thursday in one home. Others split it more like a job share, with the nanny working three days for one family and two for another.

Both setups can work beautifully. But here's the bit that trips people up: sharing a nanny doesn't automatically mean sharing an employment relationship. In most cases, each family is still the nanny's individual employer for the hours they use her. That means each household carries its own set of obligations, even though the nanny only has one name on her timesheet.

Splitting nanny wages fairly

The first real decision is how to divide the pay. A straight 50/50 split feels fair on paper, but it isn't always right in practice. Some families split by hours worked, some by number of children, and some negotiate a different arrangement entirely with the nanny herself.

Say your nanny is on $40 an hour caring for kids from both households. A common approach is for each family to contribute $20 an hour, but that's a starting point, not a rule. What actually matters more than the split itself is that it's written down properly. Money moving between two families with a verbal "just handle it" understanding is exactly how nanny share payroll ends up a mess. Your employment agreement, your pay arrangement and your actual practice all need to line up and tell the same story.

PAYG tax gets tricky fast

This is where nanny share payroll in Australia usually starts to bite. Because there are technically two separate employers, your nanny may have income coming from two different sources at once.

The ATO's general guidance is that an employee with more than one employer should only claim the tax-free threshold from the employer paying the higher wage, not from both. Claim it twice, even accidentally, and there's a real chance not enough tax gets withheld across the year, leaving your nanny with a bill at tax time nobody wants.

The cleanest way to handle this is sorting out each family's PAYG setup before the nanny's first shift, not three months in when someone's BAS doesn't add up.

Where super gets genuinely confusing

Superannuation is arguably the trickiest part of any nanny share, because domestic and private workers sit under their own rules. The ATO treats child minding as work that can fall under the "private or domestic" category, and for those roles, super guarantee contributions are generally only compulsory once someone works more than 30 hours a week for that one employer.

That threshold is what makes nanny share tax and super genuinely different to a standard nanny arrangement. Your nanny might easily clock up 40 hours across her week in total, but if that's split, say, 22 hours with one family and 18 with another, neither household crosses the 30-hour line on its own. Dividing one big number by two families and assuming super simply "applies proportionally" is the mistake we see most often, and it's not how the rule actually works.