Employers are required to help their people save for retirement
Whether you are in full-time, part-time, temporary, or casual employment, your employer plays an important role in helping you lay the foundations for a great retirement.
Superannuation Guarantee (SG)
To give all Australians the opportunity to grow their super, employers are legally required to pay a certain percentage of their employees’ pay into a nominated super fund. This is called the Superannuation Guarantee. We suggest you check your account activity at least once every three months to make sure you’re receiving the correct payments.
Choice of fund
If you start a new job and don’t tell your employer where your super should go, they will contact the Australian Tax Office to confirm which super account they should contribute to on your behalf. This is called super fund stapling and is designed to help ensure you don’t pay unnecessary fees across duplicate accounts.
Many employers offer a super fund as a benefit of working for them, but the choice is yours. You can choose to open an account with your employer’s preferred fund, or you can nominate another fund.
If you already have an account with us, you can let you employer know to pay your contributions to your Mercer Super account. If you’re not with Mercer Super, but you’d like to be, you can join here.
How to check your Mercer Super account activity
- Log into Member Online
- Visit the ‘Account Activity’ page
Here, you’ll find all the contributions your employer has made into your super, including when the contributions were made and how much was received.
Salary sacrifice
Salary sacrifice is an arrangement between you and your employer to make extra contributions to your super from your before-tax pay. It can be a great way to boost your super and possibly reduce your income tax.* Your employer does not have to offer salary sacrifice arrangements, but most will. Once you’ve confirmed that, setting it up is simple:
- contact your payroll team to discuss putting an arrangement in place
- decide if you want to salary sacrifice on an ongoing basis or as a one-off – part of an annual bonus for example
- decide how much extra you want to contribute to your super, making sure you stay under the concessional contributions cap
- get the details in writing – including the amount to be salary sacrificed and when the contributions will be paid to your super account
- your payroll team may ask you to complete a contribution form or provide other information
Any salary sacrifice contribution your employer makes on your behalf is on top of their compulsory SG obligations. Your employer should continue to use your ordinary income – not your new (reduced) income – to calculate how much SG you’re entitled to. It’s worth checking your Mercer Super account activity to ensure your SG contributions have not reduced. Learn more about salary sacrifice.
Don’t hope for the best, plan for it with financial advice
As a Mercer Super member, you have access to limited financial advice at no additional cost.
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Disclaimer: This content has been prepared on behalf of Mercer Superannuation (Australia) Limited ABN 79 004 717 533, Australian Financial Services Licence #235906, the trustee of the Mercer Super Trust (‘Mercer Super’) ABN 19 905 422 981. Any advice is of a general nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on any advice, please consider the Product Disclosure Statement (including incorporated documents) and Financial Services Guide available at mercersuper.com.au. The product Target Market Determination can be found at mercersuper.com.au/tmd. The material contained in this document is based on information received in good faith from sources within the market and on our understanding of legislation which we believe to be accurate.
Care & Living with Mercer is a service provided by Mercer Consulting (Australia) Pty Ltd ABN 55 153 168 140. Please read Care & Living with Mercer website Terms of Use when accessing the service.
* Any information in this material regarding legal, accounting or tax outcomes does not constitute legal advice or an accounting or tax opinion and prior to relying and acting on this information it is important that you seek independent advice from a qualified lawyer or accountant regarding this information. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. 'MERCER' is a registered trademark of Mercer (Australia) Pty Ltd ABN 32 005 315 917.
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. 'MERCER' is a registered trademark of Mercer (Australia) Pty Ltd ABN 32 005 315 917.