Claiming a tax deduction for your personal super contributions

You must give a notice of intent to claim a deduction to your super fund on or before whichever of the following days occurs earliest, either:

• the day you lodge your tax return for the year in which the contributions were made
• the last day of the income year after the income year in which you made the contributions.

Eligibility Criteria

You are eligible to claim a deduction if:

• you made personal contributions to a complying super fund
• you have given your super fund a valid Notice of intent to claim a tax deduction form (NAT 71121) advising the amount you intend to claim as a deduction, in the approved form, and within the timeframes explained above
• your super fund has acknowledged receipt of your Notice of intent to claim a deduction.

Note that you cannot claim a deduction for:

• First Home Super Saver (FHSS) amounts that you have recontributed to your super fund
• contributions that are identified as downsizer contributions.

A notice of intent is only valid if:

• you are still a member of that super fund
• the trustee still holds the contribution (special rules apply for voluntary rollovers, and situations where there has been a successor fund transfer or a MySuper transfer)
• the notice of intent doesn't include all or a part of an amount covered by a previous notice
• the trustee has not begun to pay a super income stream based in whole or in part on the contribution
• you haven't lodged an application to split the contribution for which you intend to claim a deduction (even if the application hasn't been dealt with by the fund)
• the contributions included in the notice of intent have not been released from the fund you are giving the notice to under the FHSS scheme
• it does not include all or part of a FHSS amount that you recontributed to your fund.

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 cap
• Division 293 tax applies to you
• you wish to split your contributions with your spouse
• it will affect your Government 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.

For more information refer to ato.gov.au or talk to your accountant or tax adviser.