Make the most of End of Financial Year opportunities 2025/26

With the end of the financial year fast approaching, there may be some valuable opportunities that are worth discussing with your financial planner. Depending on your personal circumstances, there potentially are some beneficial planning strategies you can implement before 30 June 2026.

Important: Certain eligibility requirements may apply to strategies listed below.

To avoid potential penalties, we strongly recommend seeking advice from your financial planner before implementing any of these strategies.

Self-managed superannuation

Pensions

If you currently receive a pension, check that you have withdrawn at least the minimum pension before 30 June 2026. If you fail to do so, the account will be considered to be in accumulation phase for the whole financial year, with up to 15% tax applied to the earnings and realised capital gains.

If you have not commenced a pension yet and with the upcoming indexation of Transfer Balance Cap (TBC) from $2m to $2.1m in July 2026, there may be an opportunity for you to transfer more to the pension account if you defer commencement until on or after 1 July 2026, instead of commencing before 30 June 2026.

Future opportunities to transfer more to your pension

If you start your first retirement phase income stream on or after 1 July 2026, your TBC should be $2.1 million. If you commenced your retirement phase income stream/s prior to this date and have not reached or exceeded your personal TBC, you may benefit from July 2026 indexation, but only on a proportional basis. This may allow you to transfer more to a tax-free pension.

Reserving

Concessional contributions made in June 2026 can be allocated immediately to a member’s account (to count against this Financial Year’s cap) or added to a contribution reserve and then allocated to the member’s account in July 2026 (within 28 days from the start of the financial year) to count against next Financial Year’s cap [ATO TD 2013/22]. This may help to bring forward tax deductions if you can claim personal tax deductions for contributions.

Investment strategies

Review your SMSF investment strategy to ensure it is still current and relevant. Document this review in trustee minutes and make any changes necessary to the documentation.

In-house assets

Ensure that in-house assets do not exceed 5% of total assets as at 30 June 2026.

Superannuation contributions

Non-concessional contributions

If you are below the age 75, you are able to make non-concessional contributions to superannuation and even utilise the bring forward arrangement without having to meet the work test.

To be able to make non-concessional contributions before 30 June 2026, your Total Superannuation Balance (TSB) on 30 June 2025 must have been below $2m. The following table explains potential amounts that may be brought forward based on the TSB on 30 June 2025 (assuming you were below age 75 on 1 July 2025 and you are below age 75 at the time of making the contribution):

Future opportunities to make non-concessional contributions

If you currently do not meet the requirements to make non-concessional contributions to super due to your TSB being in excess of the current cap of $2m, you may have an opportunity to revisit the strategy post 1 July 2026, as the TSB cap will increase from $2m to $2.1m on 1 July 2026. In addition to the increase to TSB threshold, the annual cap for non-concessional contributions will also increase from $120,000 to $130,000 on 1 July 2026.

These changes may allow you to delay triggering the 3 year bring forward rule until after 1 July 2026 and contributing up to $390,000 after 1 July 2026, as opposed to contributing up to $360,000 if the bring forward is triggered before 30 June 2026.

Concessional contributions

Consider maximising concessional contributions to take advantage of the full concessional contribution cap.

The annual concessional contributions cap is $30,000 per person for the financial year in 2025/26. Carry forward rules may be used if your TSB was below $500,000 on 30 June 2025, and if you have unused concessional caps from previous financial years (starting from the FY 2020/21).

If eligible and you’re below age 67 you are able to make these contributions without having to meet the work test.

If eligible and you’re aged between 67 & 75, you must meet the work test or meet the one-off work test exemption rules to be able to make personal deductible contributions.

If you’re eligible to claim a tax deduction for personal contributions, you need to ensure the contributions are received by the fund before 1 July 2026, or even earlier as certain super funds will have their own cut-off times. Before claiming the deduction, you should also ensure you have lodged a notification of the intention with the super fund trustee.

If you are salary sacrificing to super, you should check your available cap space for concessional contributions as soon as possible and consider reducing or ceasing salary sacrifice contributions if these are likely to result in you exceeding the annual cap. As the rate for superannuation guarantee contributions increased on 1 July 2025, your employer would have been paying your mandatory super contributions for the current year based on the increased rate, and as such, the available cap space for amounts being salary sacrificed may have reduced.

Future opportunities to make concessional contributions

The annual cap for concessional contributions is set to increase from $30,000 to $32,500 on 1 July 2026. If you are not maximising the annual cap already, consider this for next year. The increase in the annual cap will allow eligible individuals to build their retirement savings tax effectively.

Co-contribution

If your income is below $62,489, consider making a non-concessional contribution to receive a co-contribution. The co-contribution is paid at the rate of 50 cents for each eligible dollar contributed. The maximum co-contribution of $500 is available if your income is below $47,488.

However, there are a few other requirements to be met before the co-contribution can be paid.

Spouse contribution

If one member of a couple has income of less than $40,000, the other spouse may be eligible to contribute up to $3,000 into their spouse’s super and receive a tax offset of up to $540.

However, there are other requirements to be met before making a spouse contribution and accessing the tax offset.

Super splitting

If you’re eligible and want to split the concessional contributions made during the previous financial year, you must submit a request to your super fund by 30 June of the current financial year.

Transition To Retirement (TTR) strategy

TTR strategy

If you’re reaching age 65 between now and 30 June 2026 with balances of close to $2m in the TTR pension, you may wish to consider speaking to your financial planner as there may be an opportunity for you to take advantage of the upcoming indexation of the Transfer Balance Cap and transfer more to a tax free pension on or after 1 July 2026.

Services Australia (previously known as Centrelink)

Gifting

The gifting limit of $10,000 applies per financial year (up to $30,000 in any 5-year period). If you wish to make a gift to a family member (or other person or entity) and have not used the limit this year, you may wish to make the gift of up to $10,000 before 1 July 2026 so the full limit becomes available again in July.

Taxation

Tax-deductible expenses

Prepayments can be made for up to 12 months of deductible expenses to bring forward the tax deduction.

Offset capital gains/losses

If your assets have been sold during the year that realised either a capital gain or loss, a discussion with your financial planner or tax accountant may be beneficial, as there may be an opportunity for you to better manage the overall tax outcome.