Adding to super: the two doors and the caps

For most workers, super grows without them lifting a finger: under the super guarantee, your employer must pay a legislated minimum percentage of your qualifying earnings into your fund. Everything beyond that default, Moneysmart's contributions guidance sorts into two piles. Concessional contributions are the before-tax door — employer contributions, salary sacrifice (asking your employer to pay part of your pre-tax pay into super instead of to you) and personal contributions you claim a tax deduction for. Non-concessional contributions are the after-tax door: money you pay in yourself, from income the tax system has already taxed.

The doors differ in where the tax happens. Money through the before-tax door is taxed inside the fund rather than at your marginal rate in your pay — a flat rate known as contributions tax that, as Moneysmart puts it, may be lower than the tax rate most people pay on their income. Money through the after-tax door isn't taxed again on the way in, because it already was. And the doors connect: claim a deduction on a personal contribution and it shifts from the after-tax pile to the before-tax pile, contributions tax and all.

That gap — your marginal rate versus the fund's flat rate — is the entire engine of voluntary super. Every dollar through the before-tax door swaps the tax you'd have paid in your own name for the lower rate inside the fund, which is why salary sacrifice exists at all. (At very high incomes an extra slice of contributions tax applies above a set threshold, narrowing the gap.) What happens to the money once it's inside — who holds it, how it's invested, and what it costs — is the system itself, covered in Super basics.

Neither door is unlimited. Each has its own annual cap — a yearly limit on how much can go through — and the tax office is watching the turnstile: go over the yearly limit, Moneysmart warns, and you may need to pay extra tax. The before-tax cap counts everything through that door together — employer contributions, salary sacrifice and deductible personal contributions all draw down the same yearly limit — which is why the tool below stacks your employer's money and yours before comparing.

Two arrangements stretch the caps for the right circumstances. Carry-forward lets you use unused before-tax cap from recent earlier years — useful after career breaks or lean years — but only if your total super balance sits under a set threshold. The bring-forward arrangement works the other direction on the after-tax door: eligible people can pull several future years' caps into a single year, the door a windfall like an inheritance or a property sale walks through. Both carry eligibility conditions of their own.

What this page deliberately won't tell you is the numbers. The caps, the thresholds and the eligibility lines are government settings, indexed and reset over time; any figure printed here would eventually be wrong, quietly. The current caps live on the ATO's key superannuation rates and thresholds page, and Moneysmart's guidance points to the ATO for the current rates the same way. Check them fresh before you commit to anything — especially an arrangement that repeats every payday.

Some doors have someone on the other side, pushing with you. Make after-tax contributions as a low-to-middle-income earner and, per Moneysmart, the government may add extra money of its own — the co-contribution. There's no form to hunt down: eligibility is worked out when you lodge your tax return, and any co-contribution lands directly in your fund. Low earners get a second automatic boost, a low income superannuation tax offset paid straight into super — no application; the ATO works out who qualifies and pays it in.

Couples get boosters of their own, in two shapes. You can split contributions — moving some of your own contributions across into your spouse's account, though only certain contribution types qualify. Or you can contribute directly to your spouse's super: if they earn under a set threshold or aren't working, Moneysmart notes, that may let you claim a tax offset — a reward on your own tax for topping up theirs. The amounts and income lines for every one of these boosters move; the current ones are on the same Moneysmart page.

And for renters eyeing a deposit, the after-tax door has one more use. Voluntary contributions are the raw material of the First Home Super Saver scheme — the detour that lets eligible first-home savers put voluntary super contributions to work on a deposit. It has enough rules, and enough traps, to deserve its own page: the mechanics live in First home help.

Salary sacrifice is the payroll door: per Moneysmart, you ask your employer to pay part of your pre-tax pay into your super — also called salary packaging — so the contribution happens inside the pay run, before the money ever reaches your account. That makes it an arrangement, not a transfer: set up once with your employer, then repeating every payday on its own, which is exactly what makes it stick. The trade is a smaller take-home pay, so size it to survive your real budget, not your optimistic one.

The self-serve route to the same before-tax door is a personal deductible contribution — pay money from your bank account into your fund, then claim a tax deduction for it. The paperwork order matters: before you can claim, Moneysmart notes, you must tell your fund using the ATO's notice of intent form. Whichever route you take, small-and-regular beats a year-end scramble — a modest amount every pay is working all year and never relies on June discipline. The arithmetic of starting sooner is in Compound interest.

Two habits close the loop. First, respect which way the door swings: super's deal is cheaper tax in exchange for locked money — what goes in generally stays until you reach the access rules, with early access a narrow exception — so the emergency buffer and short-term savings never belong through it. Second, contributions only count when they land. Moneysmart's checklist for verifying them is your payslip, your myGov account and your fund's own records — the same landing-check habit at the heart of Payday super.