The following information is provided as a convenience and has been sourced from the Australian Tax Office website. Any links below will open in a new window on the ATO website.
Claiming deductions for personal super contributions
You can’t claim a deduction for superannuation contributions paid by your employer directly to your super fund from your before-tax income such as:
- the compulsory super guarantee
- salary sacrifice amounts
- reportable employer super contributions shown on your annual payment summary.
You may be able to claim a tax deduction for personal super contributions that you made to your super fund from your after-tax income, for example, from your bank account directly to your super fund. Before you can claim a deduction for your personal super contributions, you must give your super fund a Notice of intent to claim or vary a deduction for personal contributions form (NAT 71121) and receive an acknowledgement from your fund. There are other eligibility criteria that you must meet.
People eligible to claim a deduction for personal contributions include people who get their income from:
- salary and wages
- a personal business (for example, people who are self-employed contractors, or freelancers)
- investments (including interest, dividends, rent and capital gains)
- government pensions or allowances
- super
- partnership or trust distributions
- a foreign source.
The personal super contributions that you claim as a deduction will count towards your concessional contributions cap. When deciding whether to claim a deduction for super contributions, you should consider the super impacts that may arise from this, including whether:
- you will exceed your contribution caps
- Division 293 tax applies to you
- you wish to split your contributions with your spouse
- it will affect your super co-contribution eligibility.
If you exceed your cap, you will have to pay extra tax and any excess concessional contributions will count towards your non-concessional contributions cap.
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