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ATO 2023-24 puts the median GP taxable income at $156,733 across 27,776 GPs, with a mean of $196,060 1. That is income after business deductions, not what you bill and not a salary. GPs also work the shortest week of any medical group at 35.7 hours 2. Billing model matters more than anything else.
The official number, stated honestly. ATO Taxation Statistics 2023-24 records 27,776 general practitioners with a median taxable income of $156,733 and a mean of $196,060 1. Taxable income is what is left after business deductions — rooms, staff, indemnity, equipment, depreciation — so it is not billings and it is not a salary. Lead with the median: the mean is dragged up by a small number of very high earners. The average salary-and-wage component is $145,370, which tells you most GPs are not on a wage at all 1.
Why the range is so wide. GPs work the shortest average week of any medical group — 35.7 hours against 43.8 for specialists in training 2 — and most are contractors on a percentage of billings, so income is billings times your split minus tax and super you fund yourself. The market norm is around 65–70% of billings for a fellowed GP 4. Nothing about that is a salary: no employer super, no paid leave, no sick pay.
What drives the number. Billing model first — fully bulk-billing work sits well below private or mixed billing on the same hours. Then hours, then procedural work (skin, IUDs, iron infusions), then rurality. The Workforce Incentive Program pays $3,600–$48,000 a year by remoteness classification and years of service, which is why rural GP and rural generalist incomes sit above metro 3. The 2025 tripled bulk-billing incentive lifted the bulk-billing end materially 5.
The honest spread. People reporting real figures on the sub land anywhere from under $200k full-time bulk billing to $385k on 36 hours, with rural generalists and locums higher again 6. A useful rule quoted repeatedly: bill $600k and expect to take home about $200k after the clinic's cut, tax and super 6.
The gender gap is large and published. ATO 2023-24 records mean GP taxable income of $224,191 for men against $169,131 for women 1.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
If you bill $600k per year expect to take home around $200k. Approximately. It's quite variable to be honest.
I work 36 hours a week, 4 weeks off a year. I checked my tax returns last year and turns out I made 385K.
About $200+ an hour. Keep in mind you're a sole trader usually and need to fund your own superannuation, sick and holiday leave from that.
I also have friends who work full time bulk billing and earn under $200k per year.
Asked 96 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in r_ausjdocs_posts.jsonl (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /\bGP\b.{0,40}(income|pay|earn|salary|billing|money|\$)|(income|pay|earn|salary|billing).{0,30}\bGP\b/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring comments in the 2026 'how much do GP actually earn' thread, deliberately spanning the range from under $200k full-time bulk billing to $385k on 36 hours, with the billings-to-take-home correction included.