Super contribution caps

What happens if you go over the contribution caps depends on whether your contributions are before-tax or after-tax.

If you go over the concessional (before-tax) contribution cap

Any contributions you make over your before-tax limit are taxed at your marginal tax rate, with a 15% tax offset.

After you lodge your tax return, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will let you know you've exceeded the cap, and explain your options:

• Withdraw the extra: You can withdraw up to 85% of your excess contributions from your account. That amount is added to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal tax rate. You're entitled to a 15% tax offset for the contributions tax you've already paid.
• Leave the extra: If you leave excess concessional contributions in your super, they are added to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal tax rate, and they count towards your non-concessional contributions. You're entitled to a 15% tax offset for the contributions tax you've already paid.

If you decide to leave the excess funds in your super account, you can elect to pay the additional tax yourself or you can send the ATO a release authority and they'll tell us to pay the excess from your account on your behalf. Any amounts we release for tax no longer count towards your non-concessional contribution cap.

If you go over the non-concessional (after-tax) contribution cap

If you go over your after-tax contributions limit, the ATO will send you details after you lodge your tax return, and explain your options:

• Withdraw the extra: You can withdraw all excess after-tax contributions and up to 85% of the associated earnings calculated by the ATO.
  If you do this, you won't be taxed on the contributions, but the ATO-calculated earnings are included in your income tax assessment. You're entitled to a 15% tax offset on the ATO-calculated earnings.
• Leave the extra: If you choose to leave the excess contributions in your account, you will be taxed at the highest marginal tax rate of 47%.
  If you decide to leave the excess in your super, the ATO will send a release authority to us, instructing us to pay the additional tax from your account on your behalf.

• Keep an eye on your contributions throughout the year (in our mobile app or in Member Online), including any you make to other superannuation funds (through ATO online services in myGov).
• If you're about to go over your concessional (before-tax) contribution cap, you could make voluntary/non-concessional (after-tax) contributions instead.
• If your employer's contributions would put you over the concessional contribution cap, you can ask your payroll office about decreasing your salary for superannuation purposes.
• If you work for the Queensland Government and make standard concessional contributions, you could reduce them or switch to after-tax contributions.

If your total super balance is more than $1.48 million, you may not be able to access the full bring-forward rule:

For these purposes, your total superannuation balance is determined on 30 June of the previous financial year.

There is a limit on the total amount of superannuation you can transfer to a retirement income stream without paying additional tax. This is known as the transfer balance cap.

For the 2021-22 financial year, the general transfer balance cap was set at $1.7 million, and this limit remains for 2022-23.

However, your transfer balance cap depends on your circumstances, so each person will have a transfer balance cap between $1.6 and $1.7 million. To check the balance of your personal cap, you can check your ATO online account using myGov.

All of your account balances combined across any income streams or pension accounts count towards this limit - either at QSuper or other super funds (not including Transition to Retirement Income accounts). For our Lifetime Pension, your initial purchase price counts towards the transfer balance cap.

Visit the Australian Taxation Office for more information.

If you’re a Defined Benefit account member, we use a formula to calculate your concessional contributions as notional taxed contributions.

Refer to the Defined Benefit Guide (pdf) for more information.

If you withdrew some of your super early because of the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, you can choose to recontribute that amount back into your super as a personal contribution. You may be eligible to have this treated as a COVID-19 recontribution, which is not included in your contribution caps and you can't claim the contribution as a tax deduction.

The recontributions will count towards your transfer balance cap. For more information, please see the ATO's website.

There are some exclusions to the contribution caps, such as the government co-contribution. Read our Personal Contributions Guide (pdf) for details.