Super contributions before 30 June 2025: what actually counts, and when

If you are weighing a superannuation contribution in the last week of June, the date that decides its fate is not the one on your bank transfer. A contribution counts towards a cap in the year your super fund receives it, not the year you send it. Here is how the 2024–25 caps work, what the carry-forward and bring-forward provisions require, and what an over-cap contribution costs.

The two caps that apply in 2024–25

Concessional contributions are amounts someone has claimed a deduction for: employer super guarantee, salary sacrifice, and personal contributions you claim yourself. They are taxed at 15% inside the fund. The ATO's key superannuation rates and thresholds put the general concessional cap at $30,000 for 2024–25.

Non-concessional contributions are after-tax amounts nobody claims a deduction for, and are not taxed again on the way in. The cap is $120,000.

One condition on that second cap matters. If your total super balance was $1.9 million or more at 30 June 2024, your non-concessional cap is not reduced. It is nil, and any after-tax contribution is an excess contribution from the first dollar. That $1.9 million is the general transfer balance cap for 2024–25.

Carry-forward concessional contributions, and the amount that expires this month

If you have unused concessional cap from 2019–20, it disappears at the end of this financial year. Unused amounts last a maximum of five years, so a 2019–20 amount not used by the end of 2024–25 is gone.

Since 1 July 2018, any part of your concessional cap you did not use has been accruing, and in a later year you can contribute above the general cap by drawing on it. The ATO's concessional contributions cap guidance confirms the oldest available amount is always used first. That ordering is what makes the expiry bite: you do not choose to use the 2019–20 amount, it is simply the first one consumed.

One condition gates the arrangement. Your total super balance must have been under $500,000 at 30 June of the previous financial year, which for 2024–25 means 30 June 2024. The test is applied at that date and no other, so a balance that has since climbed above $500,000 does not remove this year's access.

The bring-forward rule for non-concessional contributions

Contributing more than $120,000 of after-tax money does not automatically create an excess. If you are under 75 at any time in the financial year, exceeding the annual cap triggers the bring-forward arrangement, which pulls one or two future years of cap into the current year. You do not elect into it, and you cannot elect out once a contribution has triggered it.

How much you can bring forward depends on your total super balance at 30 June 2024. The ATO's non-concessional contributions cap guidance sets the 2024–25 bands as:

• Less than $1.66 million: a first-year cap of $360,000, over three years
• $1.66 million to less than $1.78 million: $240,000, over two years
• $1.78 million to less than $1.9 million: $120,000, with no bring-forward period
• $1.9 million or more: nil

Once triggered, the arrangement locks. Indexation during the period does not apply to you, so your total stays fixed at the first-year cap multiplied by the number of years. In the second or third year, your remaining cap drops to nil if your total super balance reached the general transfer balance cap, $1.9 million for 2024–25, at the previous 30 June. Because the trigger is automatic, the ATO suggests checking your online services account before making a large contribution.

For a self-managed fund, the balances driving these bands come from the fund's own reporting, which is why SMSF administration and contribution timing are hard to separate.

Personal deductible contributions and the notice people forget

A personal contribution begins life as a non-concessional contribution. It becomes concessional only if you give your fund a notice of intent in the approved form and the fund acknowledges it. Without both steps the deduction is not available, whatever you intended.

The ATO's guidance on personal super contributions sets the deadline as whichever comes first of the day you lodge your return for that year, or the end of the following income year. A contribution received in June 2025 can still be covered by a notice lodged well into 2025–26.

That window is where the problem sits. A notice is only valid if you are still a member of the fund, the fund still holds the contribution, and the fund has not started paying a super income stream using any part of it. Contribute in June, roll your whole balance to another fund in August, and the notice you lodge in October is invalid. The deduction is lost permanently. The same follows if the interest has been withdrawn, or a pension started using the money. Where you have partially rolled over, only the proportion still in the fund can be deducted.

Between 67 and 74 you must also satisfy the work test: 40 hours of gainful employment in a consecutive 30-day period during the income year, or the one-off exemption. The deduction is claimed in your return, which makes it part of the year's taxation and compliance work.

The co-contribution and the spouse offset

The government co-contribution matches eligible personal non-concessional contributions at 50 cents in the dollar, to a maximum of $500. The ATO's government contributions thresholds for 2024–25 are a lower income threshold of $45,400 and a higher threshold of $60,400. The full $500 is available at or below the lower figure, nothing is payable at or above the higher one, and it tapers between them. You must also be under 71 at year end, draw at least 10% of your total income from employment or business, and hold a total super balance below the general transfer balance cap of $1.9 million. A contribution you claim as a deduction does not count.

The spouse contribution tax offset runs the other way, going to the contributor rather than the fund member. Per the ATO's spouse super contributions guidance, it is 18% of the lesser of two figures: $3,000 reduced by every dollar your spouse's income exceeds $37,000, and the contributions you made. The maximum is $540, phasing out at spouse income of $40,000. The contribution counts as your spouse's non-concessional contribution either way.

A contribution counts when your fund receives it

This decides which year everything above applies to. The ATO states it identically on both of its cap pages: contributions count towards a cap in the year your super fund receives them. Its guidance goes on to tell people to make sure their fund receives all contributions by 30 June, if that is what they intend.

Receipt is not payment. An electronic transfer sent late on a Friday in June may not be credited until the following week. An amount routed through a clearing house sits there until the clearing house passes it on. Where someone else contributes for you, the ATO's advice is to check they have allowed enough time.

The rule cuts the same way for employer contributions. Super guarantee for the June quarter can lawfully be paid as late as 28 July, so a compliant payment covering April to June often counts in the following year's cap. Salary sacrifice follows the same rule unless the timing is written into the agreement with your employer. Contributions can be disregarded or reallocated in special circumstances, but that is an application decided by the Commissioner after the fact, not a timing plan.

Example: a contribution that missed by two days

This is a worked example, not a client.

Dani is 54 and works for a Robina engineering firm on ordinary time earnings of $160,000. Her employer's super guarantee for 2024–25, at the 11.5% rate, is $18,400, leaving $11,600 of her $30,000 general cap unused. Her total super balance at 30 June 2024 was $420,000, under the $500,000 threshold, and she has one unused amount carried forward: $8,000 accrued in 2019–20. Her available cap for 2024–25 is therefore $38,000, of which $19,600 is unused.

On 27 June she transfers $19,600 to her fund. It is received on 1 July, making it a 2025–26 contribution. Three consequences follow.

Her $8,000 of unused 2019–20 cap was available only until 30 June 2025. It has expired, and nothing brings it back.

The deduction she planned for 2024–25 is not available in that year. Had the money arrived in time, the $19,600 deduction would have taken her taxable income from $160,000 to $140,400, keeping the whole amount inside the 37 cent bracket. At a 39% marginal rate including the Medicare levy, it would have reduced her tax by $7,644, while her fund paid $2,940 of contributions tax on the way in. The difference is $4,704. That arithmetic now belongs to 2025–26.

In 2025–26 her employer's super guarantee rises to 12%, or $19,200 on the same earnings. Added to the $19,600 received on 1 July, her concessional contributions for that year are $38,800 against a $30,000 cap, with nothing carried forward left to absorb it. She has $8,800 of excess concessional contributions.

What excess contributions cost

Excess concessional contributions are included in your assessable income and taxed at your marginal rate, less a non-refundable 15% offset for the tax the fund already paid. The excess concessional contributions charge no longer applies to contributions made from 1 July 2021 onwards.

You can elect to release up to 85% of the excess from your fund to help pay that tax. What you leave behind matters: unreleased excess concessional contributions count towards your non-concessional cap, which can carry you over that cap as well and trigger a bring-forward arrangement you never intended to start. Where an amount cannot be released, the ATO puts the combined tax at up to 94%.

Excess non-concessional contributions are handled through a determination, and you have 60 days to elect between two options. You can release the excess plus 85% of the associated earnings, with those earnings included in your taxable income and a 15% offset applied. Or you can leave the amount in the fund, where it is taxed at the top marginal rate plus Medicare levy, currently 47%. If no election is made, the ATO applies the release option by default in most cases.

The arithmetic here is settled. Which of these mechanisms is relevant to a particular person is not, because that turns on a balance, an employment position and a marginal rate specific to them. That is a conversation for your accounting and advisory team, and a better one to have in May than in the last week of June.