Anyone with less than $500,000 in superannuation can claim an easy tax deduction of as much as $44,400 before June 30, but that is just one of the many reasons people should review their super plan before the end of the financial year.

That’s because a raft of deceptively small changes will take effect on July 1 that will have an outsized effect on how much money you have to retire on, whatever your life stage.

Here’s a checklist, broken down by age brackets, for what you need to do before and after June 30.

What everyone can do to boost their super

The first thing anyone with less than $500,000 in super should do is look at whether they have contributed less than the maximum allowed under the concessional annual contribution caps over the past five years, says Adrian Raftery, the author of 101 Ways to Reduce Your Tax – Legally.

These contributions are made from income that has not yet been taxed. They include the mandatory super guarantee contributions that are paid by your employer, as well as “salary sacrifice” contributions.

For example, someone on a salary of $200,000 would have $23,000 paid by their employer as a super guarantee contribution. So the gap would be $7000 if they did not salary sacrifice.

The caps have risen over the past five years, from $25,000 to $30,000, so it is possible to total those gaps up, contribute them to super and claim a tax deduction, says Raftery.

Be mindful that you must be under the cap when compulsory employer contributions are included.  

For someone earning a constant $200,000 a year, if you add up the shortfall between the compulsory contributions and the cap each year over the past five years, you get $38.000, he says.

But if a person’s salary rose from $180,000 five years ago to $200,000 today, the gap between the employer contribution and the cap is bigger, meaning the total amount that could be deducted today is $44,400, he says.

“It’s their money – all they are doing is just reallocating funds from their own name into their superannuation fund,” Raftery says. “The benefit of that is they get tax deduction at 47 per cent … and they pay just 15 per cent tax in super,” he says.

EOFY essentials: Explore our guides to tax, super, and saving

Next comes the elephant in the room: Labor’s plan to impose a new tax on super balances greater than $3 million, and to apply that tax to unrealised gains.

This change is important now for the 80,000-odd people that Labor says will be initially affected, but also the 1.2 million that Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino says will be hit by the tax over the next 30 years.

Legislation for the so-called Division 296 tax, which is proposed to begin in the year beginning July 1, still needs to go through parliament, so the word from advisers is to wait until it becomes law before doing anything.

In preparation for the tax, however, people with properties in their self-managed super fund should make sure they have current valuations.

“It would be better to ensure your properties truly match the market value on 1 July 2025 than to have a large rise in value recorded in future years that will trigger higher Division 296 tax,” writes Liam Shorte, a specialist adviser with Sonas Wealth.

How to boost your super in your 20s

With interest rates falling, younger people who want to save for a house deposit might want to put extra into super to benefit from the First Home Super Savers Scheme, says Kym Bailey, technical services manager at JBWere.

Participation in the scheme requires voluntary contributions to super of up to $15,000 to a maximum of $50,000. Contributions can be made from pre-tax or post-tax dollars.

“If a property isn’t purchased, the individual has a two-year window to return the capital to super or pay 20 per cent tax on the released amount,” Bailey says.

The increase in the super guarantee rate to 12 per cent on July 1 from 11.5 per cent will help boost super balances for younger people.

While an extra $500 a year on earnings of $100,000 may not sound like much, that $500 turns into more than $5000 in 40 years, assuming a return of 6 per cent a year.

How to boost your super in your 30s and 40s

Salary sacrificing to bring total contributions up to 15 per cent of your salary can make a big difference to your balance at retirement, even for people who are paying off a home and educating children, says JBWere’s Bailey.

“For this group, personal tax can be high, so a simple tax management strategy includes salary sacrificing to super. This strategy can deliver higher after-tax returns where the personal tax rate is higher than the flat super tax rate of 15 per cent.

“It is beneficial to develop the habit of making incremental additional contributions year-on-year to benefit from compounding returns. However, a key priority for this group will be debt reduction and establishing a satisfactory lifestyle, often leaving little spare cash,” she says.

If you do salary sacrifice, you will need to take into account the extra 0.5 per cent when you calculate how much of your $30,000 concessional cap will be available to salary sacrifice or make personal contributions, Shorte writes.

Other things to consider for married people, especially where one person earns considerably more than the other and there is some spare cash available, are government tax breaks, says Noreen Les, private wealth adviser at Integro Private Wealth.

They include: making a non-concessional contribution if you or your partner earn between $40,000 and $60,400 to get access to a government $500 co-contribution; and, if your spouse earns less than $40,000, making a spouse contribution of $3000 to access the tax rebate of $540.

Another change for people planning a family is the introduction of super payments on the government’s parental leave scheme.

Eligible parents with babies born or adopted on or after July 1 will receive the super guarantee of 12 per cent on their parental leave pay. The lump sum superannuation contribution, including an interest component, will be paid to your nominated super fund following the end of each financial year in which government-funded Parental Leave Pay was paid. The first payments will begin in July 2026.

How to boost your super in your 50s

If your super balance is lower than you will need in retirement, it could be worth considering making non-concessional contributions. To be safe, contributions should be made two weeks before June 30 because it can take time for super funds to process them, says financial adviser Liam Shorte.

The caps on these are rising by $100,000 on July 1.

Depending on how much you have in super, it is possible to transfer as much as $480,000 to super if you contribute $120,000 before July 1 and then $360,000 next fiscal year, says Bailey. The cap on the allowable super balance to use those contributions will rise to $1.76 million from $1.66 million on July 1, 2025, Bailey says.

For business owners who are over 55 and have owned their business for 15 years or more, the capital gains tax-related cap on the amount they can claim on a non-concessional contribution will rise to $1.865 million from $1.8 million on July 1.

The cap on the amount that individuals can transfer from their super to a retirement pension will rise to $2 million on July 1, from $1.9 million.

Another opportunity that applies across the board with no upper age limit is the downsizer contribution. Up to $300,000 can be added to super following the sale of a home that has been held for at least 10 years and was, at some stage, your main residence.

How to boost your super at 60-plus

If you are in the pension phase, it can make sense to look at the tax-free component of your super and how to use a re-contribution strategy to increase that tax-free component by up to $480,000, says Integro’s Les.

Withdrawing money from super and putting it back in as a “non-concessional contribution” – that is, one you don’t claim a tax deduction for – means they can later be paid out tax-free, no matter who receives the money.

This effectively washes away tax liabilities so that adult children who receive leftover super as an inheritance do not have to pay the usual 15 per cent tax.

It is also worth checking whether your pension balance on June 30 will be significantly different from the year before. That can impact the amount of minimum pension payments for the year ahead, says Les.