Meg Heffron, director and founder of Heffron, said that with volatile inflation, the transfer balance cap and concessional contribution cap have been changing, and with clients over 75, it can determine whether they can still make contributions to their fund.
“Everything looks like it’s set, and then, because they’re allowed to make non-concessional contributions all the way up to 75 and can even bring forward non-concessional caps up to 74, you suddenly find that their balance might be going up, but the thresholds are going up faster,” Heffron said in a recent technical webinar.
“You may find that they were in a position where they couldn’t make any more non-concessional contributions, but actually now they can.”
Heffron said the transfer balance cap and concessional contribution cap are “critical” numbers, and as superannuation is indexed to different things, they tend to go up at different times and at different rates.
“We did get an increase to the transfer balance cap, up to $2 million, this year, but you might remember we didn’t get a change in the concessional contributions cap,” she said.
“When we’re talking about caps, though, I always like to have a look forward to what will happen next year. Will we see increases in those things again? I don’t think the transfer balance cap will go up next year. We’d need quite a bit of price inflation, and we’re halfway through the period that’s used for that measurement.”
However, she said that regarding the concessional contribution cap, the figure used to determine that increase was very close to the limit on 1 July 2025, and now needs less than 1 per cent of wage inflation to get that increase.
“We’ve already had more than that, so I think unless wages go backwards, we will see an increase in the concessional cap, and therefore the non-concessional cap next year. That results in the usual changes to our thresholds, such as at what point could somebody be able to do a three-year bring forward for their non-concessional caps,” she said.
“If we take my predictions about next year into account, this year, it’s going to be one of those years where it’s easier to have a balance low enough to do a three-year bring forward than it will be next year, because next year is likely to be one of those years when the contribution cap goes up, but the transfer balance cap stays the same.”
She continued that this will make it harder to do a three-year bring forward for non-concessional contributions.
“What that will also mean is it is a good idea to check your older clients, because it’s actually becoming really common these days that you put some contribution planning in place for one of those older clients, and get that set up, but you max out their pension,” she said
“So it always pays, whenever these thresholds and caps change, to have another look at those older clients and make sure and work out whether or not they can or can’t make contributions now.”
