We are considering moving back to UK from Australia after 5 years but am concerned about what we can do with our Super Funds. Any advice much appreciate ie: can we transfer it to a UK fund? Can we claim it at normal retirement age and have it paid to UK bank account? OH will be 50 next month.

If you are Australian PR then it has to stay in Australia until it pays out.

BB

Actually, you can do a stat dec to declare you will be giving up residence and that releases the funds. Be aware the fund will be subject to tax and it does mean the end of your PR. If you are citizens though then you cant do anything.

Do you know if you can pay a minor contribution regularly from the UK into this??

Cheers

Ginny

As a resident leaving Australian you can claim your super but have to pay tax.

As a citizen you are not allowed to access your super until you are 60. This will then be tax free. There are exceptions to claiming super before retirement but they are very limited and again you have to pay tax.

With regards to making voluntary payments, I was advised by a friend that it would not be necessary. If you have annual fees of say $1000 a year and your super makes $5000 from investment returns then you will be up by $4000 and therefore volunatry contributions would not be necessary. Your super return would be enough to cover fees. Even in bad years he said that the returns would be enough to cover any admin fees.

When you hit the age of 60 you can then ask for the money to be sent to you whereever you are in the world. Just keep a file with your super details in it so you can have your member number and also ensure that they confirm your forwarding address so they know where to send the money to.

hope that makes some sense.

Sure, you can top it up up to a maximum of $150,000 per year! However, this will be with after-tax money, so rather than doing this you are better off putting more pre-tax money from your UK earnings into whatever UK pension scheme you are part of.

This idea keeps coming up and there is never any supporting evidence other than hearsay.

According to the ATO you cannot access the departing superannuation payment unless you lived in Australia on an eligible temporary visa.
http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/co....htm&page=2&H2

Some permanent residents may have spent some time on such a visa before getting PR and they might be able to reclaim that part of superannuation but that is about it.

Anyone else who has managed to access superannuation on this basis has, as far as I can see, only been able to do so where a superannuation fund doesn't understand the rules.

But go ahead, write to your superannuation fund and/or the ATO and see what they say.

I know we had a poster a few years ago, I think it was Fleaflyfloflum whi got super moved back even though they had been PR. Its in one of the Super threads somewhere. From memory they had to tell DIAC first that they were cancelling their PR visas.

OK, this took some finding, but here's the thread - http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...60#post7658860
It was actually TraceyW who got the super back, Flea just mentioned it in several places, this being probably the most comprehensive.

I'm afraid that is still hearsay and even if it's true, doesn't prove it was done legally. It is entirely possible that a fund did not understand the rules properly. But it doesn't mean that the same mistake would happen twice.

If there is any verifiable evidence that a person can claim back superannuation earned while a PR/citizen then I'd be interested to see it, there has never been any up to now.

You can claim back your Aussie super after you turn 55 if you "retire" from the work place. My friend did this to finance a trip to Europe then she returned to Australia (she is Australian) and got another job.

Her doing this inspired me to do the same in 2009, I wrote a "retiring" letter to my workplace and claimed ALL of my money from my super fund. I was/am a PR and was with a very knowledgeable superannuation fund.

This was only enough to finance my 1 year recce trip to the UK as I had, foolishly as it turns out , taken most of it 10 years previously in a redundancy package from Qantas.

I then returned to Australia and got another job.............