Superannuation advice

The caps are the whole game

Most of the value in super comes from its tax treatment, and most of the mistakes come from the limits attached to it. Concessional contributions — employer contributions, salary sacrifice and personal contributions you claim a deduction for — are capped each year. Go over, and the excess is added to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal rate, with a 15 per cent offset for the tax the fund already paid. You can then release the excess from super or leave it in — and leaving it in counts towards your non-concessional cap, which is where a second problem starts. The ATO's concessional cap guidance sets out the options.

Non-concessional contributions have their own cap and their own bring-forward rules, and both interact with your total super balance. The ATO's guidance on contribution caps sets out the current figures.

Carried-forward cap space

If your total super balance was under $500,000 at the end of the previous financial year, unused concessional cap from the past five years can be carried forward. It is one of the few genuinely valuable provisions that expires quietly — the oldest year drops off each 1 July whether or not you used it.

This matters most in a year when your income spikes: a business sale, a bonus, a property settlement. We check what space you have before that year closes, not after.

Division 296

From 1 July 2026 an additional tax applies to earnings attributable to the part of a total super balance above $3 million, and a further tier applies above $10 million. Both thresholds are indexed, and the ATO's guidance on Division 296 sets out how it is assessed and paid.

One point is worth stating plainly, because a great deal of commentary predates it. For accumulation and pension interests — which is ordinary super and ordinary SMSFs — the measure taxes realised earnings. The earlier proposal would have taxed unrealised gains, which was the reason a fund holding a single illiquid asset such as a property or a farm faced a bill with no cash to pay it. That is not how it was legislated.

That is not a rule for every interest. Prescribed interests, including some defined benefit ones, are calculated from the change in their value instead, so a defined benefit member on a large balance should not read the above as ruling the tax out.

It still does not change the case for super for most people, and it does change the arithmetic near the thresholds. If that is you, it is worth modelling rather than reacting to, alongside the tax work — which is usually where the answer sits.

Consolidating funds

Holding four funds means paying four sets of fees and, often, four sets of insurance premiums. Consolidating is frequently sensible and occasionally a mistake — insurance held inside an old fund can be difficult or impossible to replace, particularly if your health has changed since you took it out.

We check what you would be giving up before recommending you move anything. Moneysmart's guide to consolidating super covers the general position.

Where the accounting side comes in

For business owners, super is rarely a standalone decision. Whether a contribution is better made personally or through the company, how it sits against Division 7A, and what it does to your taxable income in a year you are also selling an asset — those are tax questions as much as super ones.

Sal's House does the tax work, so the two conversations can happen once rather than twice with different people holding half the picture each.