Concessional and non-concessional contribution limits

Before tax (concessional contributions) limit

Concessional contributions include the notional amount of employer contributions made to finance your benefit (including the Basic Benefit and any applicable Additional Employer Contributions) and any salary sacrifice contributions you make to PSS. There is an annual limit or cap on the total amount of contributions that you can make to a superannuation scheme that is treated on a concessionally taxed basis.

Concessional contributions are generally known as pre-tax contributions.

Your concessional contributions will also include any employer or salary-sacrifice contributions made to any other superannuation funds.

Special deeming provisions for defined benefit schemes

Defined benefit funds (such as PSS) are treated differently when it comes to the concessional contributions cap.

Under superannuation regulations, members of these schemes are covered by a deeming provision, which means if you exceed the annual concessional contributions cap, your excess contributions are deemed to be within the cap and will be reported to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) as the capped amount.

However, any concessional contributions made to other superannuation funds will not be covered by the deeming provision and will be added to your PSS concessional contributions.

If the total of your reported concessional contributions to PSS and any other superannuation funds exceeds the limit, the excess concessional contribution amount will be taxed at a higher rate.

If your PSS concessional contributions are below the capped amount for the financial year, we will report the actual amount of concessional contributions to the ATO.

Please refer to PSS Fact Sheet 16: Concessional Contributions Cap for more information.

After-tax (non concessional) contributions limit

The after-tax (non-concessional) contribution cap is currently $100,000 per annum. Commonwealth legislation allows members under the age of 65 to contribute up to $300,000 over a three-year period. If your contributions are over the non-concessional contributions cap, you will be subject to an excess non-concessional contributions tax at the rate of 47%.