How much should you salary sacrifice into super?
Last reviewed July 2026 · figures use official 2026-27 rates.
The short version: you can put up to $32,500 into super before tax in 2026-27, but that cap already includes what your employer pays in. On a $90,000 salary the employer puts in about $10,800, so your own salary sacrifice room is roughly $21,700. Every dollar you sacrifice is taxed at 15% going in, instead of your marginal rate of up to 47%.
How salary sacrifice actually works
Salary sacrifice means your employer routes part of your pay straight into super before it is taxed as salary. Inside super the contribution is taxed at a flat 15%. Outside, that same money would be taxed at your marginal rate, which is 30% once you earn over $45,000 and higher above that. The gap between those two rates is the saving. For someone on $90,000 paying 32% including the Medicare levy, moving $10,000 into super turns roughly $3,200 of tax into $1,500. The salary sacrifice calculator shows the saving against the hit to your take-home pay.
The catch most people miss: the cap includes your employer's contributions
There is one cap for all before-tax contributions, called the concessional cap, and it is $32,500 for 2026-27. The important part is that it counts everything going in before tax, including the compulsory super your employer pays. That employer rate is 12% of your salary in 2026-27.
So the room you actually have for salary sacrifice is the cap minus what your employer already contributes.
| Salary | Employer pays (12%) | Your salary sacrifice room |
|---|---|---|
| $60,000 | $7,200 | $25,300 |
| $90,000 | $10,800 | $21,700 |
| $120,000 | $14,400 | $18,100 |
| $180,000 | $21,600 | $10,900 |
Go over the cap and the excess is taxed at your marginal rate anyway, plus you may pay an interest charge, so the extra loses its point. The super contribution cap calculator tracks how much room you have left, including any carry-forward.
Carry-forward, if you have unused cap
If your total super balance is under $500,000, you can use up unused cap from the previous five years, not just this year's $32,500. That is useful if you had lean years, or you are selling an asset and want to soak up a capital gain by making a big deductible contribution in one hit. Unused amounts start expiring after five years, so there is a clock on them.
Division 293, if you are a high earner
If your income plus your concessional contributions push past $250,000, an extra 15% tax applies to the contributions above that line. It halves the usual benefit for top earners. Even then, 30% on the contribution still beats 47% on salary, so salary sacrificing usually still wins, just by less. The Division 293 calculator tells you whether it applies to you.
A worked example on $90,000
Say you earn $90,000 and decide to sacrifice $10,000 over the year.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Goes into super | $10,000 |
| Contributions tax (15%) | $1,500 |
| Net into super | $8,500 |
| Tax you would have paid on it (32%) | $3,200 |
| Tax saved | $1,700 |
| Drop in take-home pay | about $6,800 |
You give up $6,800 of take-home to add $8,500 to super, and the tax office funds the difference. The trade-off is that the money is locked away until you reach preservation age, so it works best for cash you were going to save anyway.
So how much should you sacrifice?
There is no single number. The sensible ceiling is your remaining cap, the sensible floor is whatever still leaves you enough take-home to live on and handle a surprise bill. Many people sacrifice enough to use most of the cap in their higher-earning years and ease off when cash is tight. Start with the cap room from the table above, then run your own figure through the calculators to see the saving and the cost side by side before you set it with payroll.