Carry-forward concessional contributions: five prior years stack into FY 2026-27, gated at $500,000

A trustee who has never used their concessional cap can direct up to $175,000 into their SMSF this financial year: the $32,500 cap for 2026-27 plus five prior years of unused cap stacked on top. The figure is real, it sits in the law, and it is gated by a single number that was fixed on 30 June and cannot be changed now.

Carry-forward is one of the quietest levers in the contribution rules, and one of the most misread, because it shares half its name with a different rule that works the other way around. Here is the mechanics of the concessional version, the years that count this time, and the two things that catch trustees who record their own contributions.

The five years that count this year

The carry-forward provision sits in section 291-20 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. It lets you add unused concessional cap from up to five preceding financial years to the current year's cap. The window rolls forward every year, so the five years in scope change each time. For 2026-27, the preceding years and the cap that applied to each are:

• 2021-22: $27,500
• 2022-23: $27,500
• 2023-24: $27,500
• 2024-25: $30,000
• 2025-26: $30,000

Any cap you did not use across those years, less any amount you have already carried and applied, is available now on top of the current $32,500. For a member who contributed nothing in all five years and nothing yet this year, the arithmetic is $32,500 plus $27,500 three times plus $30,000 twice, which is exactly $175,000. Most trustees carry a smaller number, because employer Super Guarantee or salary sacrifice used part of the cap in those years. The ATO keeps the running figure and shows it through myGov.

One year has just dropped off. Unused cap expires five years after the year it arose, oldest first, so 2020-21 was last usable in 2025-26 and is now gone. A trustee who was holding that year in reserve has lost it at the turn of the financial year, without notice.

The $500,000 gate is a strict line

Access to any carried amount turns on one test: your total super balance at the 30 June immediately before the contribution year, which is 30 June 2026 for the 2026-27 year, must be under $500,000. It is a strict less-than. A balance of $499,999 passes; a balance of exactly $500,000.00 does not. At or above the line, the cap for the year is the standard $32,500 and every carried dollar is unreachable.

Unreachable is not the same as lost. Carried amounts that are still inside their five-year window stay there while the gate is closed, and become available again in any later year your balance falls back under $500,000. The gate is retested every year against that year's prior 30 June balance, so eligibility can switch off and on across years while the underlying unused cap keeps ageing toward its own expiry.

For a fund sitting near the threshold, this turns into a question that is entirely about the 30 June snapshot. A member at $505,000 in May who plans a large carry-forward contribution is watching a number that a market move, a pension payment, or a rollover can push either side of $500,000 by year end. The test does not care how close you were. It reads the balance on the day.

Two things specific to running your own fund

Two mechanics catch SMSF trustees more than members of large funds, because in an SMSF you are the one doing the recording.

First, the deduction is not automatic. If the contribution is a personal one you intend to claim, you must give the fund a valid notice of intent and receive the fund's written acknowledgement before you lodge your personal return, and before you start a pension or roll the money out. In an SMSF the fund is you, but the paperwork still has to exist, dated and acknowledged, or the deduction does not hold.

Second, the cap is a member-level test run by the ATO, not a fund-level one. Your fund records a contribution as a contribution and nothing in its own accounts tells you whether it breached the cap. That determination arrives after your return, aggregating every fund you belong to. Excess concessional contributions are added back to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal rate, with an offset for the 15 percent already paid inside the fund and an excess-concessional-contributions charge applied on top. A trustee who assumed room that a prior salary-sacrifice arrangement had already consumed finds out the expensive way, a year later.

Carry-forward is not bring-forward

The names collide and the concepts do not. Carry-forward covers concessional, before-tax contributions and unused cap from past years. Bring-forward covers non-concessional, after-tax contributions and borrows cap from future years. Both moved with indexation this year, and a trustee can be eligible for one and not the other, gated by different numbers. We set out the non-concessional bring-forward tiers separately at smsfcore.com/blog/bring-forward-tiers-fy2026-27.

What we built for it

SMSF Core's caps tracker carries each member's recorded position against the concessional cap through the year, including carried amounts from prior years and the $500,000 gate as tested at the last 30 June. The worked example and the statutory reference sit on the rule page at smsfcore.com/rules/carry-forward-concessional-gate, and every figure cites the ATO source it came from. There is a sample fund at app.smsfcore.com/demo if you want to see the tracker with data already in it.

SMSF Core is an information tool, not a licensed financial service. Talk to a licensed adviser or your accountant about your own position.