Super Contribution Splitting: How Do You Share Super With Your Spouse?

Most couples build super at very different speeds. One partner works full-time while the other takes years out for children, study or caring, and the gap in their balances widens every year. Contribution splitting is the super system's fix: each year, you can transfer up to 85% of your before-tax contributions into your spouse's fund and slowly even things up.

Why This Matters

A lopsided household, one big balance and one small one, wastes valuable limits. Each person gets their own tax-free retirement pension limit (the transfer balance cap), their own $500,000 threshold for carry-forward contributions, and their own access age. Splitting spreads your family's super across two sets of limits instead of straining one. Done every year for a decade or two, it can mean an earlier, larger tax-free retirement income for the household without contributing a single extra dollar.

Who It Applies To

Couples, married or de facto, where one partner is accumulating super faster than the other. The receiving spouse must be under their preservation age, or, if between preservation age and 65, not yet retired. Employees and sole traders can both split, because all concessional contributions qualify.

Key Rules for the 2026-27 Income Year

• Up to 85% of concessional contributions. Employer super guarantee, salary sacrifice and personal deductible contributions from the previous year can all be split. The 85% limit reflects the 15% contributions tax the fund has already paid.
• Apply in the following year. Lodge your fund's contribution-splitting application in the financial year after the contributions were made, generally one application per fund per year.
• The age test sits with the receiver. Your spouse must be under preservation age, or under 65 and not retired, at the time you apply.
• It counts against your cap, not theirs. Split amounts remain attributed to your $32,500 concessional cap for the year they were contributed; your spouse's caps are untouched.
• Not every fund offers it. Check before you plan around it. Most large funds do, and an SMSF can if its trust deed allows.
• It's a rollover, not a deduction. Splitting triggers no new tax and no extra deduction. The benefit is structural, and it compounds.

Worth mapping out: whether splitting suits your family depends on both partners' balances and ages. OzLedger can map both and build a year-by-year splitting plan.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Missing the window. The application generally covers last year's contributions only; skip a year and that year's splitting chance is gone for good.
• Trying to split after-tax money. Only concessional (before-tax) contributions are splittable. Non-concessional contributions stay where they were made.
• Overlooking the age test. If your spouse has reached preservation age and retired, or turned 65, the fund must reject the application.
• Confusing it with the spouse offset. The $540 spouse contribution offset is a separate strategy using new after-tax money. You can use both in the same year.

A Practical Example

Daniel, 45, earns $150,000 and his 2025-26 concessional contributions totalled $27,000 between employer super and salary sacrifice. His wife Mei, 48, spent eight years out of the workforce raising their kids, and her balance is $95,000 against his $410,000. In 2026-27 Daniel applies to split 85%, $22,950, into Mei's fund, and repeats it every year. Because Mei is three years older, the money becomes accessible to the household sooner. Daniel's balance stays under the $500,000 carry-forward threshold for longer, keeping his catch-up contribution options alive. And in retirement, both partners can shelter savings inside their own tax-free pension limits instead of Daniel's alone.

Each year, you can transfer up to 85% of your before-tax contributions into your spouse's fund.

Key Takeaways