Employer Superannuation Guarantee Obligations

You are required to pay the Superannuation Guarantee for your full-time, part-time and casual employees, where they are 18 years or older (regardless of how many hours they work) or under 18 (and work more than 30 hours in a week). Visit the ATO website for more information.

For help deciding whether an employee is eligible for SG.

You must pay at least 12% of an employee’s qualifying earnings (QE), which is a new term, that brings together ordinary time earnings (OTE) and other payments.

You will use qualifying earnings as the base to calculate the SG amount. For many employers, the new concept of qualifying earnings doesn’t change the amount of SG payable for your employees.

Qualifying earnings include the following:

• Ordinary time earnings (OTE), i.e. payments for ordinary hours of work, including certain types of paid leave, allowances, bonuses and lump sum payments. There are no changes to what payments are considered OTE under Payday Super.
• All commissions paid to an employee.
• Salary sacrifice amounts that would qualify as qualifying earnings had they not been sacrificed to superannuation.
• Earnings paid to workers who fall under the expanded definition of employee, including payments to independent contractors paid mainly for their labour.

Some payments may fall into more than one category of qualifying earnings, such as commissions. Those payments are covered only once to the extent of the overlap in categories.

For more information and a list of payment types, see the ATO’s website here.

You are not required to pay SG on an employee’s earnings above the ‘maximum contribution base’ limit, which will be an annual cap from 2026/27 onwards, replacing the existing quarterly cap..

The annual maximum contribution base for 2026/27 is $270,830 per year, meaning a maximum required SG contribution of $32,499.60 annually, per employee.

For help working out how much super you must contribute for your eligible employees.

From 1 July 2026 you must pay employees their super guarantee (SG) contributions on payday, at the same time as their salary and wages (weekly, fortnightly, monthly etc), instead of the previous quarterly obligations.

Payment must be made to an employee’s super fund on payday and received by the super fund within 7 business days (unless an extended timeframe applies, such as for new employees – visit the ATO website for details).

You must pay SG for your eligible employees to avoid the super guarantee charge (SGC).

A contribution is on time if it is received by your employee’s super fund (with all the necessary information to allocate the contribution to the employee’s member account) within 7 business days after paying your employee. If you use a commercial clearing house (like SuperChoice), allow enough time for them to process your payment. It is best practice to make SG contributions for your employees on payday.

First contribution for a new employee or super fund

The payment deadline is extended for the first eligible SG contribution you are making:

• for a new employee
• to a new complying super fund for an existing employee after you have stopped making contributions to another super fund.

In these situations, the contribution must be received by the super fund within 20 business days after the relevant QE day. A QE day is the day you pay your employees (payday).

You may choose to offer salary sacrifice arrangements to your employees. Salary sacrifice is where an employee chooses to have you pay some of their salary to super instead of taking the money as after-tax pay.

Your employee’s salary sacrifice contributions can be used to reduce your Superannuation Guarantee liability (if you choose) as:

• The employee’s earnings for calculating SG are reduced by the salary sacrifice amount; and
• Any salary sacrifice amount can counts towards the amount of your SG obligation

If you do not meet your Superannuation Guarantee requirements, for example, your SG contribution for an employee was received after the cut-off date (within 7 business days of payday), you will be subject to the super guarantee charge (SGC).

The SGC:

• is assessed by the ATO
• is calculated based on qualifying earnings (QE)
• includes interest that compounds daily at the general interest charge rate
• includes an administrative uplift, which can vary based on an employer’s history of meeting super guarantee obligations and may be reduced by a voluntary disclosure
• is tax deductible.

From 1 July 2026, the penalties are 25% or 50% of the unpaid SGC, depending on any prior penalties.

You can claim a full tax deduction for super payments you make for employees under 75 years old by the cut-off date. Super payments are tax deductible in the financial year you pay them.