Types of contributions

Salary sacrifice contributions are made from money that is paid into your super from your salary before tax is deducted. You need to set these kinds of contributions up with your employer.

By taking these contributions from your salary before you are charged PAYG tax, the amount of salary that is left to be taxed is reduced, meaning your taxable income goes down.

Salary sacrifice contributions are taxed at the concessional rate of 15% when they are paid into ElectricSuper, which is probably much lower than your usual rate of tax.

The amount of super that you can pay by salary sacrifice is capped. The current year’s cap is available on the ATO website and is known as a ‘concessional contributions cap’. If you breach the cap, you will pay additional tax. See more about the cap and exceptions to the rule in The Concessional Contribution Cap box below.

As their name suggests, these contributions are made to your super from money post (or after) tax being deducted. They are generally made from money you have already paid tax on.

There is a limit to the contributions you can make post tax each year. This cap is known as the ‘non-concessional contribution cap’. The current year’s cap is on the ATO website. This annual limit is reviewed each year and can change annually.

A feature of ‘non-concessional contributions’ is that if you are aged 66 or under, you can choose to ‘bring forward’ up to 3 years’ worth of contributions this financial year. See the information about the ‘bring forward’ rule below in The Bring Forward box.

You can choose to make regular post-tax contributions through your payroll or you can make lump sum EFT payments from your bank account.

To set up regular post-tax contributions, complete our quick and easy Vary Your Contributions form and forward to your payroll team.

To make a lump sum post-tax contribution from your bank, complete our Lump Sum Payment form and send it back to us .

You can make contributions to your spouse’s super. Depending on your situation, you could be eligible for a tax offset of up to $540.

If your spouse’s taxable income is under $40,000 a year, you can contribute up to $3,000 into their super and receive a tax offset. This offset is calculated and shown in myTax (within www.my.Gov.au) as “Offset amount”.

Use our spouse contributions form to make a contribution to your spouse’s account.

On top of making a contribution to your spouse’s super, your spouse could also open a Spouse Account with ElectricSuper.

If you are aged 55 or older and sell your home, you may be able to contribute up to $300,000 for an individual (up to $600,000 for a couple) into super from the proceeds of the sale.

You are only able to make a downsizer contribution once and you must have owned the home for 10 years or more before the sale. The contribution must be made within 90 days of receiving the proceeds of the sale (which is usually settlement date). Other eligibility criteria apply. See the ATO website for further details.

If you want to make a downsizer contribution into your super, you will need to lodge a Downsizer Contribution Into Super form either before or at the time of making your contribution.

The cap is known as a ‘concessional contribution cap’ and the limit of this cap is reviewed by the Australian Government each year and is often adjusted annually. The amount your employer needs to pay you in regular super is also included in this cap so you need to make sure you have factored in your employer’s contributions (11% in 2023-24) before you commit to an ongoing salary sacrifice arrangement.

For example, if Jeff’s employer contributes $10,000 for him (including the amount he receives to his super and the participating employer pays to cover admin fees) each year, he will only be able to make up to $17,500 of salary sacrifice contributions before he breaches the $27,500 cap.

Jeff can see how he is travelling against the cap at any time in the online portal.

(2023-24 financial year)

However, another feature of ‘concessional contributions’ is that if your total super balance was less than $500,000 at the end of the last financial year (at last 30 June), you may be allowed to contribute more than the current ‘concessional contribution cap’ by using your unused cap from a previous year. Effectively you could use the amount of ‘concessional contribution cap’ that you didn’t use in the 5 previous years. You can carry forward from the 2019-20 financial year onwards. You can find what the ‘concessional contribution cap’ was in previous years on the ATO website.

For example, if Chris’s super balance was $325,000 at the end of the last financial year and, last year, her employer paid $12,500 in regular superannuation (including any amounts they paid towards admin costs) for her and she salary sacrificed $5,000, she could carry forward the amount of last year’s cap that she didn’t use. As last year’s concessional contribution cap was $27,500 and Chris only used $17,500 of this cap ($12,500 from her employer plus $5,000 salary sacrifice), this would mean she could contribute an extra $10,000 this year without breaching this year’s cap. That is, she could contribute $37,500 (= this year’s cap of $27,500 + $10,000 she didn’t use last year).

(2023-24 financial year)