The Super Strategy Most People Miss

As the end of the financial year approaches, superannuation remains one of the most powerful, and most commonly missed, tax planning strategies available.

In this episode of the My Accounting Advantage podcast, Mai explains how the right superannuation strategies, implemented before 30 June, can materially reduce tax while supporting long‑term wealth creation. 

She breaks down the difference between concessional and non‑concessional contributions, how salary sacrifice and top‑ups can be used strategically, and why tax savings should be viewed as a return on investment rather than a compliance outcome. 

Mai also discusses when a self‑managed super fund may be appropriate, the responsibility and compliance involved, and why control over investment choices is often a key driver for business owners and investors.

A key focus of the episode is the importance of tax planning before year‑end, including reviewing projected taxable income and identifying unused concessional contribution caps from prior years, a strategy that can unlock significant tax savings when cash flow allows.

In this episode, Mai covers:

• Why superannuation is one of the most underutilised tax planning tools
• The difference between concessional and non‑concessional contributions
• How salary sacrifice and member top‑ups reduce taxable income
• When a self‑managed super fund may, or may not, be appropriate
• The real cost and responsibility of running an SMSF
• How carried‑forward concessional caps work
• Why tax planning must occur before 30 June
• The difference between tax processing and true advisory support

Decisions made at EOFY without proper advice can’t always be undone. Taking the time to assess your position, understand your available strategies, and plan ahead can make a lasting difference, not only to your tax bill, but to your long‑term financial outcomes.

Mai has created an information pack to help understand super contributions and EOFY strategies. To get your copy:

• Visit myaccountingadvantage.com.au
• DM “Super” on Instagram @the_maiharris

Learn more about My Accounting Advantage

Disclaimer

The advice contained in this presentation is general in nature only and should not be acted on without first seeking professional advice.

Your personal circumstances have not been taken into account, and you should consider the appropriateness of the advice to your individual needs.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Super Matters

Speaker 0:04

Hello and welcome back to the podcast My Accounting Advantage. Joining me today, as always, is Mai Harris. Mai, welcome back.

Speaker 1 0:13

Thank you, Lee. So nice to be here.

Speaker 0:15

We had a lot of feedback on our case study of last week, which brings about more interest into super. Today, the super strategy most people keep missing is our episode. Take us into it.

Speaker 1 0:30

Yes, so it's super important at the moment because we are approaching the end of the financial year. And a lot of people ask me, what can I do or how can I do it? So that um I can reduce my tax payable. And yes, you can actually do something like superannuation tax strategy before the end of the financial year to reduce your tax payable.

Concessional Vs Non-Concessional Explained

Speaker 1:00

Now you were chatting to me off air that there's two types of super. Take us into that.

Speaker 1 1:05

Yeah, so there's two types of super that you should know about. There's a concessional super contribution, and another the second one is non-concessional super contribution.

Speaker 1:18

Take us into the difference.

Speaker 1 1:20

The difference is with the concessional superannuation contribution is is the tax deductible contribution. Which means that, you know, it comes in three types. So your employer contribution is classified as a concessional contribution because your employer makes super contribution on your behalf and they claim tax deduction for it. The second type one is the super sacrifice. A lot of people are familiar with that. That just means you forego your wage and for super instead. So if you actually want to boost your super balance, you can ask your employer that you can convert some of your wages into super. You actually receive, well, tax incentive for doing that because you're not actually paying tax on that amount. That's why super um superannuation sacrifice is so popular. And then the third one, you can do what we call it member concessional contribution, meaning that you have excess cash or savings that you want to push into super and you haven't contributed up to your concessional contribution cap, which at the moment is $30,000 a year per taxpayer. You can actually top it up so that um you, for example, your employer contributed, your employer contribution of $15,000 each year, and you still have al lowable top-up amount of $15,000, and you decided that yes, I um come to money and I have savings that I would like to boost my retirement, I will now do an extra $15,000 contribution. That would be classified as member contribution, and you also receive a tax deduction for that. That's another way that you can claim massive tax deduction against your taxable income. So that's the the three main concessional contribution, which is tax-deductible contribution. The second type of contribution is called non-concessional contribution, which is an after-tax contribution. A lot of people that do non-concessional contributions are people who already, you know, say pay tax on that money, like they sold an investment property and they already pay tax on that money, not sure what to do with that money, they can actually contribute up to $120,000 a year and put that towards their retirement so that it can be invested in the um super environment and earn income further. So that's another way. Because if you actually have cash from um the sale of assets or whatever, and you reinvest it under your own name, there's a chance that you'll be paying top marginal tax because you're already earning a lot of income. So that's the consideration that you need to make because you know, if it if that money you pushed into the super environment, it's a much more tax-effective structure because the super fund only pay tax at 15%. So really, you can get a much better return on investment on that cash.

Speaker 4:55

For our listeners, and we have all different types of listeners to this program,

Salary Sacrifice And Member Top-Ups

Speaker 5:00

at what point, age, time, or what structure do you decide upon? For example, should everyone have a self-managed super fund, or is it not for everyone? What what's the defining line?

Speaker 1 5:14

Well, it's not for everyone, because a lot of people need to understand that having your own self-managed super fund, you know, you need to manage that super yourself. That's why it's called self-managed, because you are responsible for the compliance, the audit that you uh have to do every year. That is not something that everyone wants to take responsible for. And if you don't do it, there's a there's fines and penalties. So you need to understand what your roles and responsibility as trustee will be. And are you willing to manage your own money, or you rather just, you know, set and forget? Well then that's when you leave it in the industry fund, or you engage a financial planner to look after your um super balances for you.

Speaker 6:09

Now, I have a self-managed super fund.

Speaker 1 6:11

Yeah.

Speaker 6:12

And I love it. I I truly believe it's a pathway to wealth because you get control over what happens. When I was very, very young, I was in external funds, but I didn't know anything about those. And my employer actually said you should get a self-managed super fund. Not knowing anything, I was very young and I set it up, and it was the best thing I ever did. But when you say manage the fund, My Accounting Advantage manages my fund. You've got people that look after my compliance and my audits and so forth. The other thing I manage is buying things.

Speaker 1 6:44

Yes, you you you yeah, you have control of your own investment.

Speaker 6:49

Yeah, you go to a bank account and uh I'm transferring a deposit for an off-the-plan property. I I I think that's just incredible that you can do that with your own money and the managing of it, there is a fee to get that done, obviously. Yeah, and I imagine other people do manage their own super fund. I wouldn't do that. I would engage professional services because I see it as a business. I see it as no different to I have database managers in my own company. It it needs to be managed correctly.

Speaker 1 7:20

Yeah. Well, super funds, um, your own self-managed super fund gives you the flexibility of you know your investment types. A lot of the time when when you feel that your investment appetite doesn't match with the industry fund because you don't really have full control. You want to, for example, invest in properties. And um, well, you can't do that with the industry fund. So that's why self-managed super funds exist. And also, for example, like now these days, you know, cryptocurrency investments and you know, or you want to buy gold and silver, etc., in it's not something that you can dictate to your industry fund to buy on your behalf. They don't do that. So if you want that type of control, then self-managed super fund is for you. But you've got to be aware that you should have uh ideally at least $250,000 in super balance to start, because the cost of compliance will not outweigh the benefit. So you it's it costs around about anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000 usually to manage it annually,

SMSF Control And Real Costs

Speaker 1 8:40

that including, you know, just getting the financial statements done and the tax returns, get the financials audited by an external auditor. And if you want to invest other types of investment like investment bonds and you want to invest in the stock market and so forth. But if you don't want to do that yourself, you can engage a financial planner to do that for you. At the end of the day, if control is something that you want for your retirement fund, well then self-managed is definitely for you.

Speaker 9:19

The best thing I ever did as a business owner was buy our premises with our self-managed superfund. We were the tenant for 15 years, the building was then sold, and it was at that point because the business was sold and the building was sold at the same time, I really felt that's what my business was. Was that opportunity, and you mentioned the word control there, and you also gave us a definition of at 250, you would give it consideration. If you didn't, for what it's costing you to run, you're not really doing anything and you're not investing in anything because it can't just sit there, it's got to do something. Yeah. But that was a a really good way of bringing that all together, and we now know there's different types of super. What else have we got on this topic?

Speaker 1 10:06

So we basically one I want to emphasize on is that before you make contribution, you really need to understand where are you at with your taxable income or projected taxable income, and you should do that before the financial year end. So now is the right time to get an assessment done and ask your advisor and your accountant to do tax planning for you because they can actually have a look for at on your ATO portal. For example, you're an employee. So they can actually have a look at your year-to-date um STP, which is, you know, um the amount of wages that you've paid until now, and then project what um you're gonna end up with at the end of the financial year, and then just assess how much super contribution you can make and what difference would make to your tax payable. So that's a real game changer for you because you can um project the tax savings that you will get from um making that extra contribution. So if you you have the the extra cash that you can say that you have in your savings or you want to invest, invest in the tax savings because that in itself, you should look at it as a return on investment because whatever tax that you save is your return on investment on that cash that you spend, reducing the amount of tax that you paid. So um, for those who own businesses or a business, you should have a look at your projected profit for the year and also ask your advisor to assess with how much more you can contribute from your business, because that will reduce the amount of tax that um your

Tax Planning And Unused Caps

Speaker 1 12:06

business will pay by making extra contribution for you. And something that they should also look for you is the unused concessional contribution caps, which means that you what is unused concessional contribution caps? It is the caps that you haven't used for the past five years.

Speaker 12:28

Wow.

Speaker 1 12:29

Yeah, so that could change a lot of things.

Speaker 12:33

What change would that bring?

Speaker 1 12:35

I'll tell you a story. I have a business owner who is in his 40s. Um he said, Look, look, my business is going really well. And this year is a record year. I'm gonna pay a lot of tax. So it was the first year that we um have him as a client. So I said, Have you heard of the unused concessional contribution? And he said, No, I have never done it. What is it? You know, it's the cap that you haven't used um because you've got you know, 30,000, for example, of um concessional contribution that you can contribute each year. So let's have a look at um what you have in terms of, you know, what you haven't used for the past five years, because we can actually contribute that amount to reduce the business tax. And we had a look, and there was a hundred and twelve thousand dollars worth of the carried forward balance that he and you just go straight in the portal, you can see that. Yes, I can. Yes. So he didn't use that. I don't know why, but anyway. So um he has um the cash flow available in the business. So I said, okay, let's just put that towards super, and then you can save, you know, 10% tax on that amount. So straight away I've saved him at least $10,000 in tax. And he's actually able to increase his super balance substantially. That allows us to even tax plan even further in his you know, super fund. Then we can utilize that um cash that he's injected into his super fund to buy commercial property. So it's a win-win.

Speaker 14:28

Such good information. And Mai, we keep finding out this that a person comes over for the first time. What happened over the other five years? Someone's doing, and I see this all the time, oh, I've got a person who does my tax and they're really cheap, they just charge me whatever. But they're costing you a fortune, because they're all they're not doing your tax, they're processing your tax and taking a very small fee to say, and they're probably processing 50 a week, but they have no interest in your life or financial gain. And that's the difference in the depth of information that we're receiving here.

Speaker 1 15:05

Yes, that's right. So your advisor is serious about, you know, if you're serious about growing your wealth, scale your business, your advisor can really change that journey for you. And they should really take time and, you know, discuss your plan, your goals, use the right structure, the right strategies helping you achieving that. So that's really important because unfortunately for my client, we can't do anything for him. That, you know, when when thing didn't go quite right for him for the past five years. But you know what? That's life. It's about moving forward, changing what we can change.

Next Topic Plus How To DM

Speaker 15:49

My another wonderful week on the podcast. We return next week as we talk about your biggest business problem, isn't your structure, it's your calendar. I'm looking forward to that one. But thank you for joining us again.

Speaker 1 16:03

Thank you, Lee. And if our listeners would like um any more information about, you know, the contributions and um di different types of contributions and the year-end checklist, please DM Super or just leave a message on the podcast and we will definitely send it over to you.

Speaker 16:24

We would love to hear your feedback, another great podcast, and I'll see you next week. Today's podcast was brought to you by myaccountingadvantage.com.au. In New South Wales, 02 4335 4909. My Accounting Advantage.