Every figure the Investment Tools show is computed in your browser from the data and rules on this page. Any default below can be changed in the tool. Nothing you enter leaves your computer.
It replays a selected portfolio mix in each historical window of Australian financial years. The windows start from FY1971 for mixed portfolios, and earlier for mixes of Australian shares only. In each window, contributions, fees, account-level taxes and inflation are applied. It then shows the full range of outcomes: worst, median and best. It is only general information. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.
Historical returns for each asset class come from Andex Charts Pty Ltd, via the Vanguard Asset Class Tool (retrieved July 2026). They were cross-checked against data published by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Bond yields and CPI: RBA/ABS published series. The financial year figures used here are consistent with the figures printed in the published Vanguard Index Chart.
The stress test offers three ready-made mixes. For the standard mix, the monthly figures are blended returns for the entire portfolio. For the exclusively Australian and exclusively international mixes, they are pre-calculated facts about crisis events. Both come from the sources mentioned above. The monthly returns for individual asset classes are the compilation of Andex Charts and are not republished here.
The full method and data are supplied with the page. The same calculation also exists in IYI's own desktop tooling. The two are checked against a fixed file of results. The engine page in the professionals section sets out in full how many checks there are. It also says how many of them currently disagree.
Term deposits are one of the three things the defensive side can hold here, along with bonds and cash. The tool models a single deposit that is opened and rolled over for a year.
What is not modelled. Three things that come with a real fixed-term deposit are missing here. For all those who might need the money before the end of the term, the difference is not small.
The bond returns here are government bonds. They stand in for the standard Australian bond index. That index is about 90% government and government-related and about 9% corporate. The company share earns a little more. The tool adds this extra return as a number, which you can set under "More options" instead of building it into the data.
Australian listed property (A-REITs) can be added to the growth side under "More options". The standard mix doesn't include any allocation to listed property. The distribution of an A-REIT consists of multiple types of income, so the tool splits the payout instead of taxing everything as ordinary income.
| Fee | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Adviser and/or SMSF fee | 1.1% p.a. incl. GST (any figure 0–3%, or none). Plus a fixed annual amount in dollars: $0 by default. This is where an SMSF's accounting, audit and levies are entered. The ATO's median for 2023-24 is $4,500 a year, the default of the SMSF row under More options. | 15% tax credit inside super accumulation. No credit in the pension. Outside super, only the advice cost that relates to tax advice is deductible (this tool deducts none). The fixed amount is held in today's dollars (indexed with inflation). It only applies to super accounts: outside the super accounts, the field is greyed and nothing is charged. |
| Platform (wrap) fee | 0.275% per year incl. GST if an adviser is used | Same tax treatment as the adviser fee in super; deductible at your marginal rate outside super. |
| Industry fund | Off by default. When selected: fund fees (MER) of 0.7% p.a. flat, plus a fixed $100 p.a. The MER is editable, and a number you enter yourself is retained and not overwritten. | The MER does not receive a tax credit anywhere. The fixed dollars are held in today's dollars (indexed to inflation). They get the 15% credit in accumulation and no credit in pension. Super accounts only. These costs are independent of the above costs of the adviser and the SMSF. All fixed amounts entered in both are added together. |
| Fund fees (MER) | Average of the three largest ASX ETF providers' flagship index funds per asset class | No tax credit; deducted from gross index returns. Editable. |
| Asset class | Funds averaged | Average used |
|---|---|---|
| Australian shares | VAS 0.07% · A200 0.04% · IOZ 0.05% | 0.05% |
| International shares | VGS 0.18% · BGBL 0.08% · IWLD 0.09% | 0.12% |
| US shares | VTS 0.03% · IVV 0.04% | 0.04% |
| Australian listed property | VAP 0.23% | 0.23% |
| Australian bonds | VAF 0.10% · IAF 0.10% · OZBD 0.19% | 0.13% |
| Cash | AAA 0.18% · BILL 0.07% | 0.13% |
| Term deposits | Money deposited in a bank, not a fund. | 0.00% |
If a provider does not have a comparable flagship fund of a class, the average uses the available ones. Fund names appear here as the basis for fee assumption, not as recommendations.
Tool 7 measures three common movements against a path: your settings, the mix is reset to the target each year, nothing is sold. Each cost is what that path finished with minus what the move finished with. For each historical starting year, there is a number. The chart shows the middle 80% of these numbers, marked with the median. The bars cannot be added up: each move changes the balance the others act on. Never restoring the mix lets each asset class run at its own return. Contributions, withdrawals, fees, and taxes are borne proportionally, so nothing pushes the weights back. The four-yearly arm is the same walk with a restore every fourth year-end. Chasing last year's winner switches the whole portfolio into a fund costing 1.5 percentage points more (adjustable). The change occurs after three consecutive financial years above the median return of the growth sleeve across the record. The portfolio switches back after three years below it. Each year's flag is determined by the years before, never by that year. The fund switched into earns the index's own returns, so the bar is the cost of the fee alone. The cash sit uses Tool 4's monthly trigger. The sale comes in the month a 20% fall (adjustable) is first crossed. The money remains in cash until the same month a year or two or three later, and then flows back into the mix. Outside super, the sale realises the capital gains tax, and the buyback resets the cost base to the price paid. These moves run on the standard share mix, as Tool 4's standard mix does, because the monthly data exists for no other. The 32 initial years overlap, so adjacent stretches share 24 of their 25 years.
The optional ongoing-cost bar is measured the same way: the path without the ongoing cost minus the path with it. It shows the cost, not what was purchased. The step-down of Tool 6 takes your settings from "before any cost or tax" and turns on each layer of costs and taxes one by one. The order is fund costs, platform costs, ongoing costs, fixed annual costs, investment income tax, contribution tax, and outside super capital gains tax when sold at the end. A second column only indicates the costs of each level, with all other layers activated. The fees are displayed in their gross amount until the tax is activated.
The first card can take a wage instead of a contribution. The yearly before-tax contribution is then the superannuation guarantee rate, 12% of the wage from 1 July 2025. Any extra before-tax amount entered is added, and the concessional cap applies as always. When the basis switches to a wage, the contribution growth defaults to wage growth (the AWOTE series) where the site has it. "How it is held" is a preset of the cost controls under More options. It sets nothing a visitor could not set by hand. "Adviser (% of funds) and platform" is the site's default. It charges the adviser fee as a percentage of funds under management, including GST, and the platform cost. "Adviser (fixed fee) and platform" charges a set dollar amount a year instead, with the platform cost. That amount is $5,000 by default, held in today's dollars and indexed with inflation. "SMSF" charges a fixed yearly cost in place of ongoing advice. It keeps the platform cost, because an SMSF commonly invests through one. "SMSF with an adviser" charges both. "Platform only" charges the platform cost alone. "Pooled fund, 0.7% a year" replaces the fund costs with one flat fee plus a fixed $100 a year. It also switches the adviser and platform costs off. Under More options, an adviser's fixed fee and an SMSF's running cost are separate rows. Both are charged inside super only, because the engine has one fixed-cost input and it belongs to a super wrapper. The SMSF cost defaults to $4,500 a year. That is the ATO's median for 2023-24 for a bundle of operating expenses: administration, audit, the supervisory levy and the ASIC review fee. It is indexed with inflation, as every fixed cost is. Any change made by hand under More options reads back as "Custom". A retirement age below 60 runs as entered, with a note that super cannot usually be drawn before then.
Tool 8 measures events in a life against the same path as tool 7: your settings, nothing happening. Each event is a change to the yearly path the engine already runs. Being scammed removes a share of the balance at the start of the year you turn the age set (all of it by default, at 60). The contributions continue, so the bar is what the loss cost by the end of the stretch. Outside super, the part sold realises its share of the gain, and the tax comes out of what remains. Losing a job scales the contributions from that age onward by the share of earnings kept. A break from paid work sets the contributions to nothing for the years named. A lifestage strategy lowers the growth share year by year from the age set, along one of five shapes. Each shape is a percentile of the growth share at each age, across the MySuper lifecycle products APRA publishes each quarter. The shape is scaled so that it starts at your own growth dial. The middle shape is the default. No product is named and none can be read from a shape. When two or more events are ticked, a further bar shows them together in one run. That bar is not the sum of the others, because each event changes the balance the others act on. An event dated after the end of a stretch costs nothing in that stretch.
On tool 8 a self-managed fund can buy a commercial property. At the age set, a share of the balance (all of it by default) leaves the invested account as the deposit. The price follows the loan-to-value ratio, 70% by default. So the member finds 30% of the price plus the purchase costs, and the rest is borrowed. The loan can be interest only, the default, or principal and interest over a term you set (25 years by default). A principal and interest repayment is re-set each year on the balance, that year's rate and the years still to run. Only the interest is deductible. The principal comes out of the fund's liquid money. The rate is the Reserve Bank's standard variable owner-occupier housing rate for each financial year, plus a margin (1.5 points by default). The margin stands for the premium that a limited recourse borrowing arrangement carries. Each year the property earns a gross yield (6% of its value by default), less the empty months. It pays interest and running costs. The running costs are 25% of the full rent by default, charged whether or not the property is let. The net rental income is taxed at the fund's 15%. The result flows into the invested account mid-year, like a contribution. The value grows at the year's inflation plus a margin (3 points by default). The empty period begins a set time after purchase (one year by default) and runs for the years and months set (two years by default). A year in which the invested account ends below zero is a shortfall. The member puts the shortfall in, and the bar counts that money as part of the cost. With the forced sale on, the property is sold at the start of the next year at a discount to its value. The discount is 20% by default. That is the figure a Reserve Bank research discussion paper, RDP 2022-03, assumed for commercial property collateral in a stress test. The paper is a working paper, not a settled result. On the sale the loan is repaid. The fund pays capital gains tax at 10% on a gain held more than twelve months, and 15% otherwise. Without the forced sale, the member keeps topping up and the property is kept. The loan is limited recourse, so neither a sale nor the horizon can leave the fund below nothing on the property. A rental loss is worth 15% against the fund's other income. This assumes the fund has other assessable income at least as large as the loss. Contributions count as that income when they are tax deductible, so a fund still receiving employer or salary-sacrifice contributions will generally have it. A fund whose only asset is the property, and which receives nothing, would carry the loss forward instead. That is not modelled. Purchase costs (transfer duty and the rest, 5% of the price by default, a judgement) come out of the deposit and join the cost base. The purchase happens at the start of the year, so that year's rent, interest and value growth all run. The money a member puts in during a shortfall restores the account to nothing. It earns no return of its own. It is counted in the cost bar and in the money-weighted return. A property still held at the end of the stretch enters the final balance at its value less the loan, with no sale and no tax. The scenario runs in super accumulation only and cannot be combined with a drifting mix or a cash sit. Platform and fund costs are charged on the invested account, not on the property. Defaults and their sources are in the configuration file's smsf_property block.
Tool 11 runs two households with the same money over every historical stretch of the years shown, from the buying age set (30 by default). By default, the home's value follows what prices actually did (the published index below). A switch runs a what-if framing instead. In it the value grows at each year's inflation plus a margin (2 points by default), and the rent then grows with inflation. The buyer pays a deposit (20% by default) and purchase costs. The purchase costs are 5% of the price, a judgement standing for transfer duty plus conveyancing. On a $1 million home, transfer duty runs from about $31,000 in Queensland to $55,000 in Victoria. The buyer borrows the rest on a variable principal-and-interest loan. Its rate is the Reserve Bank's standard variable owner-occupier rate less the discount of each era (or the visitor's own). The repayment is re-set each year on the balance, the year's rate and the remaining term (30 years by default). The buyer pays the running costs of owning: 1% of the home's value a year by default, for rates, insurance and maintenance (a judgement). The buyer owns a home whose value follows the OECD's analytical house price index for Australia. That index comes from the ABS's series, as financial-year means from FY1971. The renter pays a rent that starts at a share of the price: 3.5% by default, a judgement. The research's anchor is 3.15%, a mean private rent over a mean dwelling price for 2019-20. Those are two ABS populations that differ. The rent then follows the ABS CPI Rents index (from FY1973), so it tracks rents, not the home's value. The renter invests the deposit and purchase costs on day one. Each year the renter also invests what owning would have cost more than renting, outside super at the marginal rate. In a year when renting costs more, the buyer invests the difference instead. At the end, the buyer holds the home's value less selling costs (2.5% by default, a judgement) and less the loan still owing. The buyer also holds any investment, after CGT. The home itself is a main residence and bears no capital gains tax. The renter's investment account is valued after the CGT a sale would bear. The home and the rent are set at the start of the stretch, on the index levels of the year before it. So the home's value takes the same number of yearly steps as everything else. The invested money runs on the standard share mix at tool 3's growth dial with the site's cost settings. A home is also a place to live, which neither figure prices.
Since 13 September 2026 the tool runs a third household, "Bought an investment property instead". It rents its home like the second household. It buys a property of the same price with the same deposit, purchase costs and loan. The loan has the same rate and is principal and interest over the same term. A margin on the rate and an interest-only loan can be set instead. The household lets the property at the same gross yield it pays in rent (or at a yield of the visitor's own). It pays the owner's running costs and a letting agent's fee of 7% of rent by default. By default there is no vacancy. The net rent is taxed at the household's marginal rate. A loss reduces other tax at that rate (negative gearing, which assumes other income absorbs the loss). The household invests whatever it has left against the buyer's yearly outlay, and meets any shortfall from later years first. It sells at the end. It pays capital gains tax on the gain over the price plus purchase costs, after selling costs and the loan. Its tax follows the rules switch, like every other figure on the site. Under current law, half the gain is taxed at the marginal rate, and a rental loss is refunded at that rate. Under the 2027 rules, the cost base is indexed by inflation, there is no discount, and the rate has a floor of 30%. Under those rules, a rental loss on an established dwelling is neither refunded in the year nor relieved at the sale. So it reduces this household's wealth and never its tax. The property is taken to be an established dwelling. Depreciation and land tax are not modelled.
Tool 10 answers two questions with what the superannuation guarantee alone built over every historical stretch, from nothing. The guarantee is 12% of the income. The first question, starting out, has two paths. One is university from an age (18 by default), with some years of study (three) on a small income ($15,000 a year), then a set income ($100,000). The other is an apprenticeship from a younger age (16) on a starting income ($60,000). That income grows faster than wages (5 points a year) until it has multiplied by a set factor (doubled), and then grows with wages. The second question, retraining mid-career, starts from a deciding age (40) on an income now ($100,000). The choice is to stay, or to study for some years (six) on a share of that income (50%) and earn a set income afterwards ($200,000). An optional further stage can be added. All incomes are in today's dollars. By default they hold their value in today's money through each stretch (grown with prices, the CPI). So a $100,000 income is $100,000 of today's money in every year. A switch grows them with wages (the AWOTE series) instead. Wages have outpaced prices, so an income that grows with wages buys more at the end of a stretch than the same figure does today. Where the guarantee on an income exceeds the concessional cap, the excess is left out of super and the page says by how much. Contributions are taxed and capped as everywhere else. The invested money runs at tool 3's growth dial on the standard share mix, with platform and fund costs. The adviser fee and fixed costs under More options apply only when ticked. A person starting from nothing rarely pays them, and at 1.1% the fee would take a quarter of a guarantee-only balance. A tick adds three typical paths from ABS statistics. Each path is a construction from two ABS statistics, multiplied and read at band midpoints. The first statistic is the level by highest qualification, from Employee Earnings (August 2025). There a bachelor degree or above earns about 1.70 times what a person with no post-school qualification earns, and a certificate III or IV about 1.40 times. The second statistic is the shape by age, from Personal Income in Australia (2022-23). No ABS table publishes the cross, so the paths are typical rather than measured. On the typical degree path, the person studies from 18 to 20 on a part-time wage and works at the graduate profile from 21. On the typical trade path, the person earns 60, 70, 80 and 90 per cent of the certificate wage in four apprentice years. Those percentages are a judgement. The award pay guide's percentages are not reproduced, because the Fair Work Ombudsman's material is licensed for non-commercial use only. A degree's study debt is repaid from take-home pay, not from super, so the bars do not show it.
Tool 9 takes one yearly amount that a household could spare after tax. It runs that amount three ways over every historical stretch of the years shown. Every household holds the same loan on the same schedule: a balance owing over a term (25 years by default). The required repayment is an annuity on the balance, the years still to run and that year's rate. It is re-set each year as the rate moves. Paying extra shortens the loan. It does not reduce the required repayment, which is how a lender treats it. So each household's outlay is the same: the required repayment plus the spare amount. The arms differ only in where the spare amount goes. Each arm is reported net of the loan it still owes at the end of the stretch. The extra-repayment arm usually owes nothing. The two invested arms owe whatever the schedule has not yet repaid. Both households end with the same house, so the house itself cancels and is left out. A control decides how each bar counts the loan. The default takes the loan still owing off each arm. Then a bar can be negative when the loan outlives the stretch. The other choice counts the loan as repaid, which adds the same starting loan to every arm. Then no bar is negative, and the differences between the bars are identical to the cent. The rate of each year is the Reserve Bank's standard variable owner-occupier rate, less the discount that borrowers of that era actually obtained. That discount is nothing before 1996, a cheaper basic product in the late 1990s, and a package discount from 2004 that has drifted up to about 2.5 points. It is read from a schedule. The schedule is derived from the Reserve Bank's tables, its Bulletin, the ACCC's home loan inquiry and the Bank's Statement on Monetary Policy. A visitor who knows their own discount can enter it instead. Once the extra repayments have cleared the loan, the spare amount and the repayment no longer made are both invested for the remaining years. They go outside super by default, or into super if the visitor chooses. Before April 1986 the advertised rate was a regulated ceiling, and therefore the rate paid. Actual paid rates have been published only since mid 2015. The discounts between those dates are read from the sources above. They are a derivation, not a published series. As salary sacrifice, the same take-home is grossed up at the marginal rate into a before-tax contribution. It runs through the ordinary super accumulation path from a zero balance. That path takes 15% on the way in (30% with Division 293 on), and the fees and fund tax used everywhere else. The part of the contribution above the concessional cap is invested outside super after tax. The cap is assumed otherwise unused. Invested outside super, the same after-tax amount earns returns taxed at the marginal rate and is valued after the capital gains tax a sale at the end would bear under current rules. All three grow the yearly amount by the contribution growth setting. The invested arms carry the site's cost settings and run on the standard share mix. The marginal rate of this tab follows the rate set for the whole site until a rate is chosen here. Super is locked until preservation age. The bars show what history did with the same money in three places.
A pension must pay a minimum out every year. On tool 8, in the pension setting, two bars compare what happens to the part of those payments the household does not spend. By default that is all of it, and the share spent is a control. In one arm it is saved outside super at the rate set on tool 1. In the other arm it goes back into super as an after-tax contribution to a second account, in accumulation. That account pays 15% on its earnings and the same fees as the pension. It is merged into the pension at the end of the year its balance reaches the figure set. That figure is $35,000 by default, in today's money, and can be set between $5,000 and $500,000. Nothing goes back in once the member passes 75, and nothing goes in above the yearly after-tax contribution cap. Whatever is turned away is saved outside super instead. Nothing goes in at all once the total in super reaches the transfer balance cap ($2,000,000 in today's money). The law reads the balance at the previous 30 June. The tool reads the balance at the start of the year, which is close but not the same. The bring-forward rule lets some people put up to three years of the cap in at once. It is not modelled, so a household that would use it is understated. The transfer balance cap also limits how much may be moved into a pension when the two accounts are merged. That limit is not modelled, so a household near the cap is flattered.
How much a household spends is a control, and there are two rules. By default, both households spend the same number of today's dollars each year and save the rest. So, their expenses are identical, and the whole difference between the bars is the strategy. A year whose payment is less than this amount is spent in full. Only in such a year do the two differ. The other rule spends a share of each payment. According to this rule, the two households no longer spend the same amount. Putting the payments back into super makes the pension larger. A larger pension must pay a higher legal minimum, and the household spends the same share of that higher payment. Both bars, therefore, count both what has already been spent and what is left. Spending is counted in the dollars of the year it was spent, the same way this site totals a pension everywhere else. A dollar spent stops earning, so according to the share rule, if the share is high, the two households end up close to each other.
The second bar is what a non-dependant receives if the member dies at the end of the stretch. Money in super is part tax free and part taxable. An after-tax contribution is tax free, and earnings are taxable. A pension's tax-free proportion is fixed on the day it starts, which is why a merge matters. It re-starts the pension on the two balances put together and works the proportion out afresh. On a death benefit paid to a non-dependant, the taxable part bears 15% plus the 2% Medicare levy. The tax-free part and money held outside super bear none. By default the pension is taken to start wholly taxable. That is the common case for a balance built from employer contributions, and the least favourable starting point. The share that is tax free at the start is a control. Nothing here is advice. The bars do not weigh up whether a re-contribution suits anyone. They are the arithmetic of two accounts over the same history.
Tool 14 takes an amount now, an amount each year, or both, and runs them two ways over every historical stretch of the years shown. Set against a loan, the money compounds at the rate you enter with nothing taken off, because interest saved is not taxed. Invested, it goes into a personal account outside super at tool 3's growth dial and cost settings. It is shown after the capital gains tax that a sale at the end would bear. The page states how many of the stretches the invested side finished ahead in. A loan rate is certain and a return is not, so the two bars are not the same kind of number, and the page says so.
Three things are not modelled, and they are important: borrowing to invest, dividing a loan into deductible and non-deductible parts, and the deductibility of interest. The bigger question, which is usually meant by this comparison, depends precisely on this. This exhibit answers the return comparison alone. This can be found both in the tab and here.
Tool 15 takes a lump sum and runs it two ways over every historical stretch of the years shown. One way puts it in on day one. The other puts it in as equal instalments a year apart. The first instalment is on day one and the last is one, two or three years later (up to five). So "spread over three years" is four instalments and "spread over one year" is two. Money still waiting sits in cash at each year's cash return. That return is taxed as income at the account's rate: the marginal rate outside super, the fund's rate inside. The waiting money pays no fee. What it earned goes in with the last instalment, so a spread arm puts in the lump plus what its own waiting money earned. The lump at once puts in the lump alone. The instalments are stated in the dollars of the day they arrive, which is what a lump in hand is. The starting balance and yearly saving from tool 3 are set aside on this tab, so the bars show the lump alone. Everything else about the run is the engine's own: growth dial, costs, tax, and outside super the capital gains tax a sale at the end would bear. The page counts the stretches in which putting the lump in at once finished ahead of the longest spread.
What is not modelled: inside super, a lump sum is an after-tax contribution. Neither the annual cap on such contributions nor the rule that allows three years of caps to be used at once are applied. The tab says that.
Tool 16 has a starting amount and its own annual savings. Tool 3's account type, growth dial, costs and contribution growth apply, but not its balance and saving. The tool includes every historical stretch of any length from shortest to longest you set. Lengths are initially at three to seven years and up to twenty. It counts in how many stretches the money finished at or above a goal you enter. The balance at the end of the stretch is compared to the goal. What the money did in between is not counted. Nothing new is calculated: each stretch is an ordinary run. The target is a dollar number. It is compared in the same dollars as the bars: today's dollars, unless one chooses the pre-inflation view. Outside super, it is compared after the capital gains tax a sale at the end would bear, when that box is ticked. Shorter lengths have more stretches than longer ones because each one starts in a different year and the record ends in the same year.
This page explains what the money did. It does not say what a deposit would have bought, or whether a sum is enough for anything. No house price series feeds it. The dwelling price series in the rent-or-buy tab is intentionally not used here. The First Home Super Saver scheme is not modelled.
Tool 17 runs the same stretches as the other tabs, for money outside super. It shows what a sale at the end left after capital gains tax under both rule sets, side by side. It does so whatever the rules selector under Your scenario says. The two rule sets are the ones every after-tax figure on the site has used since the capital gains toggle shipped. Current rules: half the gain at the marginal rate at sale, the final year's additions undiscounted. 2027 rules: every year's cost indexed by the CPI from its own year, and no discount. The indexed gain is taxed at the higher of the marginal rate at sale and 30%. A loss pays nothing under either, and indexation never turns a gain into a loss.
The rules were read from the amending Act itself, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026, No. 49 of 2026, on the Federal Register of Legislation. Christoph signed that reading on 5 September 2026, and the tab's figures appeared on his word. For the law, read the Act there rather than this page. The reading found no contradiction with the two rule sets, and two gaps of scope, both stated on the tab. The whole stretch is treated as beginning after 1 July 2027. Under the Act, money already held on 30 June 2027 keeps the discount on its growth to that date. Only the later growth falls under the new rules, so for such money the 2027-rules figure here overstates the tax. And the Act's exemption for people who received a listed income-support payment in the year of sale is not modelled. There are two approximations. First, the 30% minimum is applied to the whole indexed gain, at the higher of the marginal rate and 30%. The Act instead tops up the tax actually attributable to the gain. The two give the same figure when one marginal rate applies to the whole gain. Second, the cost base is indexed with the site's yearly CPI series, where the Act uses quarterly index numbers. Outside this site altogether: the new-dwelling and affordable-housing discounts, the quarantining of rental losses, small business concessions, trusts and companies. Complying superannuation funds' own discount is untouched by the Act.
Tool 12 takes the same take-home given up in each of the years before a release age. It runs that money three ways over every historical stretch of the years shown. The first way uses it as catch-up contributions and takes it out at the release age to pay down the home loan. The second pays it straight onto the loan as it is earned. The third invests it outside super. Money put in before tax is taxed at 15% on the way in rather than at the marginal rate. That is why more of it goes in for the same take-home. It is then taxed on its earnings inside the fund like any other super money. It comes out at the release age. Every household is on the same loan schedule as tool 9, with the same choice of how a bar counts the loan. Unused concessional cap space can be used only by someone whose total super was under a limit at the previous 30 June. The limit is $500,000, a flat figure the law does not index, so it does not move along the stretch either. The space can also be used only within the years the law allows. This tool reads the balance when the catch-up begins, which is close but not the same. It leaves a stretch out when the test fails, and says how many. Room carried forward accrues over a limited number of years. So the space that can be claimed is capped at five years of the concessional cap. Anything entered above that is reported as left out rather than quietly used. This is the one case where the law allows more than a year's cap in a year. So for these contributions the usual cap is lifted by exactly that room, and by nothing else. The release age cannot be set below 60. Below it a lump sum is not tax free, and this exhibit takes the whole account out at once. The cap space itself is entered in today's money and carried along the stretch's inflation path, like every other dollar figure here. The Australian Taxation Office sets out what counts as a condition of release, and the rules for carrying room forward. The page links to them rather than restating them. The figures used here were read on 4 September 2026: five years of room, a $500,000 balance limit, and the site's own concessional cap.
Tool 13 moves a share of each year's concessional contributions to a partner's account. It compares what the couple held at the end with keeping everything in one account. The concessional cap is applied before anything is split, so splitting cannot put more into super than one person could. A split is made after the financial year ends. This tool treats the money as landing in the partner's account in the year it was earned. The money is invested either way, so the difference is whose account earned that year's return. With nobody starting a pension, the two arms are the same to the dollar, which is the finding. The money is in the same investments, taxed the same way, whichever account holds it. A difference appears only when something else changes. A fixed cost, if one is set, is charged to every account that exists, so splitting carries two of them. If a pension is started at the age set, that account's earnings stop being taxed, but the minimum must be paid out. What is paid out is invested outside super, where its earnings are taxed at the marginal rate rather than 15%. So starting a pension earlier is not free, and the bars show it. A split cannot go to an account that has left accumulation. So splitting stops in the year the partner reaches that age, and from then the whole contribution stays with the member. Nothing is contributed to an account already in the retirement phase, so contributions stop in the year the member reaches it, in both arms alike. The couple therefore contributes the same money in the same years whichever arm is shown. The Australian Taxation Office sets out what may be split, and by when. The figure used here, at most 85% of a year's concessional contributions, was read on 4 September 2026. The partner's own account starts empty by default, so the bars show what the splitting itself does.
Tool 4 also states in how many of the stretches that triggered a sale the selling finished ahead. That's a count, not a judgement. Tool 4 also has a tick for an inherited package: money that arrives and isn't added. With the tick, the contribution is set to nothing for that tab alone.
"The cost of selling out" simulates an investor who sells everything in the
month their portfolio is first down the chosen percentage from its peak. The
check runs monthly from 1970 onwards. The investor then remains in cash for
the remainder of the window. Fees and the tax on cash income continue, and all
contributions continue to flow into cash. The optional third bar sells at the
lowest point of the same fall instead. It offers three pre-made mixes: the
standard growth mix of 45/55, Australian shares only, and international shares
only. Each has bonds on the defensive side. The custom splits under "More
options" apply to the other views. The GFC drawdown figures shown next to the
chart are from peak to trough, July 2007 – June 2009. These are Australian
shares −48%, international shares in AUD −38%, the usual 45/55 mix with 100%
growth −39%, and the standard growth portfolio of 70% −27%. They come from the
same monthly data that comes with the page in data/facts.json. An
automated repository check will fail if the numbers on this page differ from
this file.
Designed and produced by Dr Christoph Schnelle, In Your Interest Financial Planning. In Your Interest Financial Planning Pty Ltd, ABN 28 094 300 464 is Authorised Rep. No 308161 of Fiduciary Duty Advisers Pty Ltd AFSL No 527434. Questions and corrections are welcome: contact us.