ACS does not deduct years from your experience. It sets a date, and your qualification decides where the date lands

The phrase “ACS deducted my years” is everywhere and it describes the mechanism badly enough to cause real planning errors. ACS does not subtract a number from a total. It uses a quantity of your relevant experience to satisfy the suitability criteria, and then it prints a date — the Skill Level Requirement Met Date — after which the remaining experience is labelled Skilled Employment. How much experience is consumed depends on three things ACS publishes: the level of your qualification, whether its ICT content is a major or a minor, and whether it is closely related to the occupation you nominate.

The table ACS publishes

This is the IT criteria table from ACS’s General Skills pathway page, reproduced as published on 2026-09-03.

AQF-comparable qualification	IT content	Relevance to nominated occupation and ANZSCO code	Relevant IT work experience required
Bachelor’s degree or higher	IT Major	Closely related	2 years, completed in the last 10 years, OR 4 years completed anytime in past work history (whichever provides the earliest skill date)
Bachelor’s degree or higher	IT Major	Not closely related	4 years relevant work experience completed anytime in past work history
Bachelor’s degree or higher	IT Minor	Closely related	5 years completed in the last 10 years, OR 6 years completed anytime in past work history (whichever provides the earliest skill date)
Bachelor’s degree or higher	IT Minor	Not closely related	6 years relevant work experience completed anytime in past work history
Diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree	IT Major	Closely related	5 years completed in the past 10 years, OR 6 years completed anytime in past work history (whichever provides the earliest skill date)
Diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree	IT Major	Not closely related	6 years completed anytime in past work history

ACS’s footnotes to that table, verbatim:

• “Relevant IT work experience must be professional IT employment and at least 20 hrs per week”
• “The 10-year work experience requirement is based on the 10 years preceding your online skills application submission date (10 years before you submit your application)”

Three observations that the table earns and that most summaries lose.

The “whichever provides the earliest skill date” clause is not a choice you make. Where two options are listed, ACS applies whichever produces the earlier date. Its Skill Level Requirement Met Date page states the principle: “The ACS assessment process will seek to find the earliest Skill Level Requirement Met Date possible for each assessment pathway.”

There is no diploma row for an IT Minor. Diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees appear only with an IT Major. The major test for those awards is not a percentage but “one full academic year worth of ICT content” — see what ACS counts as an ICT major.

“Not closely related” costs two extra years at every level. Two becomes four; five-or-six becomes six. That penalty is driven by ACS’s separate rule that “at least 65% of the IT content must be closely related with sufficient core content to the nominated occupation (ANZSCO)”. Choosing the occupation you nominate is therefore part of the experience arithmetic, not a formality afterwards.

Which row you land on is decided by the qualification assessment, not by this table. If your award is a three-year overseas bachelor, start with how ACS treats a three-year Indian BCA or B.Sc (IT); if you are considering adding a postgraduate ICT qualification to move rows, start with non-ICT bachelor plus ICT master’s.

The Data Science table is a different table

ACS publishes a second eligibility table for Data Science occupations, and its columns are not the same. Instead of a major/minor axis plus a relevance axis, the rows describe the field of the major or minor directly:

AQF-comparable qualification	Relevance to nominated occupation and ANZSCO code	Relevant IT work experience required
Bachelor’s degree or higher	Major in Data Science	2 years, completed in the last 10 years, OR 4 years completed anytime in past work history
Bachelor’s degree or higher	Major in ICT/Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Engineering	4 years completed anytime in past work history
Bachelor’s degree or higher	Minor in Data Science	5 years completed in the last 10 years, OR 6 years completed anytime in past work history
Bachelor’s degree or higher	Minor in ICT/Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Engineering	6 years relevant work experience completed anytime in past work history
Diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree	Major in Data Science	5 years completed in the last 10 years, OR 6 years completed anytime in past work history
Diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree	Major in ICT/Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Engineering	6 years completed anytime in past work history

This is the one place in ACS’s published criteria where a maths, statistics or engineering major is named as carrying weight in its own right rather than being counted through its ICT unit content. ACS attaches a reservation: it “reserves the right to assess the relevance, and determine the standards against which the skills and knowledge of a person are assessed as being suitable (or not) for their nominated occupation(s).”

The other two pathways have their own single figures

Post Australian Study. The requirement is “An Australian bachelor’s degree or higher with a major in IT or Data Science that is closely related to the nominated occupation and ANZSCO code”, plus one of: “One year (365 days) of relevant work experience in Australia or overseas, completed after the completion date of the relevant degree OR completion of the ACS Professional Year”. ACS marks the qualification condition: “This skills assessment requires an Australian qualification to meet suitability.”

Recognition of Prior Learning. One row: “6 years of relevant work experience – your most recent work experience must be active or within the last 2 years prior to submission of your assessment application.” No qualification is assessed at all under RPL — see ACS RPL and non-ICT degrees.

What the date actually is

ACS: “All successful assessment letters will include a Skill Level Requirement Met Date, which is determined by the outcome of the suitability criteria. All relevant work experience completed after the Skill Level Requirement Met Date will be considered Skilled Employment.” And in bold on ACS’s own page: “The work experience required to meet the suitability criteria is NOT included as Skilled Employment.”

That is the whole mechanism. The years the table demands are spent, not deducted — they are used up establishing that you meet the criteria, and only what comes after the date carries the Skilled Employment label.

The second rule is the one that surprises people:

“The Skill Level Requirement Met Date is dependent on the completion of both the relevant qualification and relevant work experience. If an applicant’s work experience is completed before the completion date of their qualification, the Skill Level Requirement Met Date will be determined by the earliest date that both the relevant work experience and the qualification are completed.”

Experience earned before you finished the degree does not push the date earlier than the degree. ACS gives two worked examples, reproduced here as published.

ACS Example 1 — employment completed after the qualification. A relevant bachelor’s with an IT major completed 31 Jan 2014; four years of relevant experience from 1 Feb 2014 to 31 Jan 2018. “2 years of work experience will be used to satisfy the suitability criteria and the applicant’s Skill Level Requirement Met Date will be 31 Jan 2016. All suitable work experience completed AFTER 31 Jan 2016 will be considered Skilled Employment.”

ACS Example 2 — employment before the qualification. Two years of relevant experience 2008–2010; two more 2011–2013; a three-year relevant bachelor’s completed 31 Jan 2016; a further two years 2017–2019. “The ‘Skill Level Requirement Met Date’ will be 31 Jan 2016 because this is the date BOTH the relevant work experience AND the relevant qualification are completed… All work experience completed before 31 Jan 2016 is NOT considered Skilled Employment.”

Four years of pre-degree work, in ACS’s own example, produce no Skilled Employment at all.

Four rules that quietly change the count

• Overlaps count once. ACS: “if you have two relevant work episodes that ran for one year but overlapped by three months, then both episodes will be listed as wholly accepted and suitable on the assessment result. However, the total experience counted towards your Requirement Met Date will only be 1 year and 9 months.”
• Under 20 hours a week is unsuitable. “Full-time work is considered to be 20 hours or more per week and must be stated in the employment reference letter.”
• Placement work embedded in your degree does not count. “If your work experience was a requirement of your qualification, this will not be counted towards your assessment.”
• You cannot add evidence later. “Once your application has been submitted and is in process, additional documentation cannot be included.” ACS also states that nominated ANZSCO codes cannot be changed after submission.

Fees and processing, as read on the ACS pages today

ACS’s fees table on 2026-09-03: Qualification Only $625; Post Australian Study $1,136; General Skills $1,498; Recognition of Prior Learning $625; Level 1 Appeal $516; Level 2 Appeal $620. The page shows a bare dollar sign and does not state the currency, and ACS notes it “reserves the right to review and amend its fees and charges” — so confirm on the day.

Processing, from the pathway FAQs: “For applications that do not require any requests for additional documentation or information, please allow between 4 - 6 weeks for the skills assessment to be completed.” Appeals: “Please allow approximately 2-4 weeks for processing.” A level 1 appeal must be lodged within 60 days of the outcome letter; a level 2 appeal within 30 days of the level 1 outcome, and no new documents may be submitted at level 2.

ACS states that a suitable outcome is valid for two years, and that it “does not currently support Outcome Reassessment nor Outcome Renewals”. It also warns that criteria are revised over time: “it is sometimes possible for returning applicants to receive an outcome not in line with their previous assessment outcomes.”

What to do with this

1. Identify your row before you count anything: qualification level, major or minor, closely related or not. The row, not your total years, sets the requirement.
2. Check whether any of your experience predates your qualification. If it does, ACS’s Example 2 tells you what happens to it.
3. Remove overlaps once, drop anything under 20 hours a week, and drop placements that were course requirements.
4. Get every employment reference to state hours per week and exact dates, because you cannot supplement the file after submission.

We describe the published criteria and the definitions ACS prints on its own pages. We do not advise on what any Australian authority does with a Skill Level Requirement Met Date afterwards — that is outside what this site covers. ACS states a skills assessment is required “BEFORE you can apply for a visa”; for visas, see the Department of Home Affairs or a registered migration agent. Nothing here predicts an outcome; ACS decides.