Guide

Super and SMSFs when you leave

Two beliefs cost departing Australians the most here: that leaving lets you access your super, and that you can cash it out on the way through the airport. Both are wrong for citizens and permanent residents. And if you run a self-managed fund, moving overseas can quietly break its residency and land it with a punitive tax bill.

Preservation reality: leaving is not a condition of release

Super is preserved until you meet a condition of release, generally reaching your preservation age and retiring, turning 65, or a handful of hardship and incapacity grounds. Departing Australia is not on that list. You can move to the other side of the world, become a non-resident, renounce nothing and everything, and your super stays exactly where it is: locked in the fund until a genuine condition of release is met, on the same timetable as if you had never left.

This surprises people because so many things do change on departure. Your income tax residency changes, your CGT position changes, your Medicare access changes. Super does not. It is a preservation regime tied to age and retirement, not to where you live.

The DASP myth: citizens and PRs can NEVER claim it

The Departing Australia Superannuation Payment (DASP) lets certain people take their super when they leave. The myth is that any Australian can use it to cash out on the way out. In truth, DASP is available only to former temporary residents, people who were here on an eligible temporary visa that has now ceased, and who have left. If you are an Australian citizen or permanent resident, you can never claim a DASP, full stop, no matter how permanently you leave or how long you stay away.

This is one the ATO will not budge on, because it is not a matter of judgement. It is a categorical eligibility rule. A citizen who moves to Dubai forever has precisely the same super access as a citizen who never left: none, until a condition of release. Budget your departure on the assumption that every dollar in super is untouchable until retirement age.

Why your super can’t leave with you

There is also no mechanism to “transfer” your Australian super to a foreign pension scheme the way the UK allows in some cases. You cannot roll it into a US 401(k) or a Singapore CPF equivalent. It stays in the Australian system, invested, growing (or shrinking) with the market, and taxed under Australian super rules, until you draw it down years later, potentially as a non-resident, which raises its own questions about how the destination country will tax those eventual payments. The super stays; only you leave.

The SMSF residency trap

If you run a self-managed super fund, leaving is far more dangerous than for an industry-fund member. An SMSF must remain an Australian superannuation fund to keep its concessional 15% tax rate. Fail the residency tests and it can become non-complying, taxed at the top marginal rate on its income and even its assets, a catastrophic outcome. There are two conditions that departure attacks:

• Central management and control (CM&C). The fund’s strategic decisions must ordinarily be made in Australia. There is a temporary-absence concession (broadly up to two years) but if you, as trustee, are making the real decisions from abroad indefinitely, CM&C shifts offshore and the test fails.
• The active member test. Broadly, at least 50% of the fund’s assets (by value) must be attributable to members who are Australian residents, if there are “active” members contributing. If you leave and keep contributing while non-resident, you can tip the fund offside.

The three fixes for an SMSF

If you are leaving and cannot keep the fund compliant, there are three standard routes, in rough order of severity:

• Wind up the fund. Roll the balances into an APRA-regulated fund (industry or retail) before you go. Clean, final, and removes the residency risk entirely, but you lose the control and any bespoke investments the SMSF held.
• Convert to a small APRA fund. Replace yourself as trustee with an approved professional trustee, so the fund keeps its structure and assets but no longer depends on your presence for CM&C. Costs more to run, but preserves the fund.
• Restructure the trusteeship / decision-making. Appoint a resident to genuinely exercise central management and control, or use an enduring power of attorney arrangement so a resident makes the decisions in fact, not just on paper. Cheapest to maintain, but the ATO looks at substance, a resident who rubber-stamps your emailed instructions will not save the fund.

Here’s what the ATO will actually fight you on: who really makes the decisions. A resident co-trustee whose only function is to sign what you tell them is exactly the arrangement audits unpick. If you keep the fund, the resident’s control has to be real.

Division 296: a proposed extra tax to watch

Division 296 is a proposed measure to apply an additional 15% tax on earnings attributable to the portion of an individual’s total super balance above $3 million. As at mid-2026 it remains a proposed and much-debated measure rather than settled long-standing law, and its detail, including the treatment of unrealised gains and the threshold’s indexation, has been contentious. If your balance is near or above the threshold, it is a live planning input, but treat it as pipeline, not certainty, and check its status before relying on any particular version of the rules.

General information only, not tax, legal or financial advice, and no tax agent services are provided. Verify your position with a registered tax agent before acting. Rates and rules last verified: 23 July 2026.