• Resize text
• Print this page

Calculators

Contributions Optimiser

Use this calculator to find out whether you should make additional contributions to your super via salary sacrifice or from your take home pay.

Important Information

The Contribution Optimiser is not intended to be a substitute for professional financial advice. You should not make any decisions based on the information obtained using the Contribution Optimiser without consulting your financial planner or accountant.

If you would like to be referred to a financial planner who is familiar with your fund please contact the Helpline on 1800 555 667.

What is Contribution Optimiser?

The Contribution Optimiser is a tool showing you the likely scenarios of various contribution strategies and their impact on your net income and net contributions to super. It can help you determine if you wish to make additional contributions to your super before-tax (i.e. salary sacrifice) or after-tax. The calculator also takes into account the Government co-contribution and contribution limits.. The functionality of the Contribution Optimiser relies on a number of assumptions. As you can imagine, these assumptions will not always be entirely accurate.

Accordingly, as with all plans, you should be prepared to make adjustments to your retirement objectives at regular intervals along the way. The Contribution Optimiser is only a very small part of what should be your broader retirement planning process.

What does the Contribution Optimiser do?

The Contribution Optimiser allows you to:

• compare how your net annual contribution to super, including any co-contribution from the Government, will be affected based on your annual income and contribution assumptions; and
• suggest a contribution strategy (we call it "Optimal Contribution Strategy") which shows the mix of before-tax and after-tax contributions which, based on your inputs and the assumptions, is likely to give you the highest net income plus net contributions.

What does the Contribution Optimiser NOT do?

The Contribution Optimiser:

• provides no guarantee that the calculation will represent the actual outcome;
• provides no guarantee that any of the assumptions will be suitable for your particular circumstances;
• is not intended to, and does not constitute, personal financial product advice; and
• does not provide any warranty of reliability or accuracy of the information provided.

You will be asked to provide "Your gross salary". If you receive income that attracts rebates, deductions or receives special tax concessions, the Contribution Optimiser may not be appropriate.

Assumptions

The assumptions that we have set into Contribution Optimiser include the following:

that the current laws, as at 1 July 2010, continue.

• There may, of course, be changes to the current laws and this would impact the outcome.
• that the maximum Medicare levy payable is 1.5% on income received over the Medicare levy low income threshold.

In addition:

• we have not made an allowance for any administration or investment fees that may be payable on contributions;
• we have considered you as an individual taxpayer and have not taken into consideration tax rebates or offsets that may be applicable to your circumstances and/or the additional Medicare levy for higher income earners without private health insurance; and
• we have not considered any tax payable on your superannuation benefit.