Vacation Pay Calculator

The word "wages" does most of the work

Almost every calculator online asks for one number — your gross earnings — and multiplies it by 4%. That is wrong in six provinces, because the statutes do not agree on what goes into that number.

Manitoba goes the other way again: s. 39(1) is a closed exclusion list naming overtime, wages in lieu of notice and prior vacation pay — and general holiday pay is simply not on it, so it counts. New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island exclude holiday pay but keep overtime. That is four provinces with four different answers to the same question.

This calculator therefore asks for the parts rather than the total. Each province adds up only what its own statute includes, and then tells you what it left out.

Quebec is the only province that counts your tips

If you work for tips, the provincial border matters more to you than to almost anyone else.

Ontario's Employment Standards Act s. 1(1)(d) removes "tips or other gratuities" from the definition of wages outright. Quebec does the opposite. The fifth paragraph of s. 50 of the Act respecting labour standards requires the annual leave indemnity under s. 74 to be computed "on the basis of the wages increased by the tips attributed or reported".

A server on $30,000 of wages and $18,000 of declared tips is owed vacation pay on $48,000 in Gatineau and on $30,000 in Ottawa. Same job, same tips, twenty minutes apart.

When the higher rate starts — a twelve-year spread

Nearly every province pays 4% and steps up to 6%. What almost nobody gets right is when.

Note also that Nova Scotia's own guidance page contradicts its statute, telling readers the 6% arrives "after completing 7 years". That disagrees both with s. 32(1)(c) and with the vacation-time sentence on the same page. We follow the Act.

Vacation pay and vacation time are two different entitlements

They are earned on separate clocks, and confusing them is the most common way people are underpaid.

• Vacation pay accrues on your earnings, often from your very first day. In Saskatchewan it accrues at 3/52 from day one; in British Columbia it begins after five calendar days.
• Vacation time usually vests only after twelve months of service — so a new employee can be owed real money and still have no right to take the days.

If you leave before you take the time, the pay is still yours. Every province requires accrued vacation pay to be paid out on termination, whatever your length of service.

Saskatchewan is the outlier on both counts: it is the only province where the base entitlement is three weeks rather than two, and the only one that reaches four weeks. It also starts at 5.77% while everyone else starts at 4%.

How this calculator works

The rate is applied to your provincial wage base once, in whole cents, rounded half up. Saskatchewan's rate is held as the fraction its statute actually states — three fifty-seconds, not the Ministry's rounded 5.77% — because the rounded figure pays slightly more than the law requires.

Every threshold and definition on this page carries the section it comes from, and the same engine produces both the figures in this text and the figures in the tool above.