You can help your spouse grow their super by making contributions into their super account on their behalf.

Spouse contributions

Spouse contributions are especially popular because depending on your spouse’s income, you may be able to claim a tax offset – this could reduce the tax you pay on your taxable income.

The maximum tax offset you can claim is $540, where your spouse’s income is less than $37,000. The tax offset gradually reduces when your spouse's income is greater than $37,000, and phases out completely when their income reaches $40,000.

There are some other eligibility requirements – for example, your spouse must be aged less than 75, and you and your spouse must not be living separately and apart on a permanent basis when making the contribution.

When the contribution is made to your spouse’s super account, it is treated as a non-concessional contribution – in other words, like an after-tax contribution.

Contribution splitting

Contribution splitting allows you to split the following before-tax contributions between your and your spouse’s super accounts.

This means you can both have super to draw on when you retire. It allows spouses who are not working or have a low income, to build up super within their own fund.

You can split up to 85% of before-tax contributions that were made during the previous financial year. These include:

employer SG contributions
salary sacrifice contributions
personal deductible contributions.

You can apply to split contributions with your spouse at any age. But your spouse must be:

below their preservation age, or
between their preservation age and 65 and not yet retired.

Help your spouse grow their super – spouse contributions and contribution splitting