Contribution Splitting

Contribution splitting is for the purpose of increasing the super’s account balance of your spouse by giving a portion of your super. When you split your contributions, you transfer or rollover a portion of the contributions you recently made to your SMSF account to your spouse’s SMSF account.

A spouse includes a person:

  • You are legally married to.
  • You are in a registered domestic relationship under certain state or territory laws (including registered same-sex relationships).
  • Of the same or of a different sex, who lives with you on a genuine domestic basis in a relationship as a couple (also known as a de facto spouse).

Conditions to be met when splitting with your spouse and the lodgement time-frame

Spouse requirements

To be able to split with your spouse, he/she has to meet the following conditions:

  • Their age is less than the preservation age (depends on your date of birth), or
  • Has attained the preservation age and less than 65 years old, and not retired.
The lodgment timeframe

You can lodge the Superannuation contributions splitting application in the:

  • Financial Year immediately after the Financial Year in which the contributions were made.
  • Financial Year the contributions were made, only if your entire benefit is being withdrawn before the end of that Financial Year as a rollover, lump sum benefit or combination of these.

When would your application be invalid

Your application mostly likely is invalid if the following conditions are applied to your situation:

  • You have already applied in that Financial Year and the Trustee of your SMSF has received your application.
  • The splitting amount for your spouse is greater than the maximum amount that can be split.
  • Your spouse is 65 years old or over.
  • Your spouse has reach their preservation age and retired.

Types of contributions that can be split

There are 2 main types of contributions that can be split with your spouse:

  • Taxed splittable contributions which are generally made up by employer contributions, salary sacrifice, and personal contributions – up to 85% of total amount.
  • Untaxed splittable employer contributions (if you are a Member of a public sector super scheme) – 100% of untaxed splittable employer contributions if that amount is less than the concessional contributions cap for the Financial Year.

For a full list of contributions that can and cannot be split, please see the Instruction Guide.

You can also view the sample form for the Superannuation Contributions Splitting Application.

To know more about what contributions that you can make to your SMSF, please see here.