Superannuation
Concessional Carry Forward
A rule allowing you to use any unused concessional contributions cap from the past five years, letting eligible individuals make larger catch-up contributions to super in a single year.
Concessional contributions get a tax concession as an incentive: rather than being taxed at your marginal rate (up to 47% including the Medicare levy for high income earners), they're taxed at a flat 15% inside super. The government does this because it wants people building their own retirement savings, so they're less reliant on the Age Pension later on - but that concession only applies up to an annual cap.
The problem is that not everyone is in a position to use their full cap every single year. Someone on a high, stable income can max out their concessional cap year after year and capture that tax benefit consistently. Someone with irregular income, a career break, or who simply couldn't afford to contribute more in a given year misses out - even though they might have plenty of cash available five years later when their circumstances change. Concessional carry forward exists to level that up: it lets you use any cap you didn't use in the past five years, so a good year later on gives you access to the same cumulative opportunity as someone who's been maxing out their cap the whole time.
Eligibility
Your total super balance must be under $500,000 at 30 June of the previous financial year - this is checked each time you want to use the rule, not just once.
How you access it
You don't need to apply or opt in. It's triggered automatically whenever your concessional contributions in a year exceed the standard annual cap - the ATO then draws on your unused amounts from prior years to cover the excess, oldest year first, so you don't get taxed on it as an excess contribution. You can check how much unused cap you have available via ATO online services (through myGov), under Super → Information → Carry-forward concessional contributions.
Each year's unused cap amount is only available to carry forward for five financial years - after that it drops off. For example, unused cap from the 2020-21 financial year is only usable up until the end of 2025-26; if you haven't made a contribution that draws on it by 30 June 2026, that specific year's unused amount is gone for good. It doesn't roll into a permanent pool - each year's unused cap has its own five-year clock, so the amount you can access shrinks over time if you don't use it, even though new unused cap keeps getting added each year you contribute under the standard cap.
For the official rules and current concessional cap details, see the ATO's concessional contributions cap page. To record your previous concessional contributions in Canwi (so unused carry-forward amounts are modelled correctly), see How can I record my previous concessional contributions?. To model catch-up or max-cap contributions in your plan - including using carry-forward - see How does the Contribute to Super event work? in the Canwi Help Center.
Related terms
See it in your plan
Canwi models Australian tax, super, and pension rules so you can explore decisions like this in a full financial plan.