Your employer paid super the whole time you worked here, and when you leave for good you can take it with you. The payment is called a , and it is taxed on the way out — at 35%, or at 65% if any of it traces back to a working holiday visa.
All three matter. You cannot claim while you are still here, including on a bridging visa — that is a valid visa and you have not left. And once you hold permanent residency the door closes: your super stays in the system until you reach preservation age like everyone else.
| Component | Tax | If working holiday contributions are in the payment |
|---|---|---|
| Tax free component | nil | nil |
| Taxed element of the taxable component | 35% | 65% |
| Untaxed element of the taxable component | 45% | 65% |
Section 5 of the Superannuation (Departing Australia Superannuation Payments Tax) Act 2007. Most ordinary employer contributions sit in the taxed element, so 35% is the common case.
Subsection 5(3) is narrower and wider than people assume. It applies where a payment made on or after 1 July 2017 includes amounts attributable to super contributions made while you were a working holiday maker.
Someone who spent six months on a 417, then four years on a 482, has a single fund balance. Because the payment includes those early working holiday contributions, the entire taxable component leaves at 65% rather than 35%. On a $40,000 balance that difference is about $12,000.
Six months after the later of (a) your visa ceasing and (b) your departure, you become a former temporary resident under s 20AA of the Superannuation (Unclaimed Money and Lost Members) Act 1999. At that point s 20C says the Commissioner must notify your fund, and the money is transferred to the ATO.
It is not lost — you claim it from the ATO instead — but it leaves your fund's investments and the claim takes longer. Two exclusions in s 20AA are worth knowing: it does not apply to New Zealand citizens, nor to anyone with a valid permanent visa application that has not been finally determined. So if your PR application is still pending, your super is not swept up.
Very little, and that is the point worth stating. DASP eligibility turns on your visa and your departure, not on whether you were a . You can have been a resident for tax purposes for years and still claim a DASP the moment your temporary visa ceases and you are gone.
What residency does affect is everything else in your final year here — the threshold, the levy, what you must declare.
65% on the whole taxable component. The payment includes contributions made while you were a working holiday maker, and subsection 5(3) then lifts the rate for all of it.
No. The trigger is contributions attributable to the working holiday period. No work on that visa means no such contributions, so the ordinary 35% and 45% rates apply.
No. A DASP is only for former temporary visa holders who have left. Once you hold permanent residency your super follows the normal preservation rules.
No. It will have been transferred to the ATO six months after you left, and you claim it from the ATO. The same tax rates apply when it is paid out.