How much can I withdraw from my super for a house deposit?

Here’s the direct answer: you generally can’t withdraw from your ordinary super balance for a house deposit at all. Superannuation is preserved by law until you meet specific conditions, and buying a first home isn’t one of them. What you can access is far narrower: the First Home Super Saver (FHSS) scheme, which releases specific voluntary contributions you’ve made on top of your compulsory super — not your account balance as a whole. The most FHSS will ever release is $15,000 of eligible contributions from any one financial year, capped at $50,000 in total since 1 July 2017, plus associated earnings.

That distinction — a defined slice of voluntary contributions, not your whole balance — matters more than any of the dollar figures below. FHSS, administered by the ATO, lets you make voluntary contributions into your superannuation and later apply to have them released, together with associated earnings, to help fund a deposit on your first home. For the full walkthrough of eligibility and how the scheme’s mechanics fit together, see our guide to how the First Home Super Saver scheme works.

What’s the difference between your super balance and what FHSS can release?

Most of what’s in your super account is compulsory — the Superannuation Guarantee your employer pays on top of your wages. FHSS has nothing to do with that money. It only counts voluntary contributions you choose to add yourself: concessional contributions, made before tax (salary sacrifice is the common route), and non-concessional contributions, made from money you’ve already paid tax on. Both can count toward FHSS, but the scheme treats them differently when calculating what you get back.

Why can’t you simply withdraw from your normal super balance?

Superannuation is preserved by law — locked away until you meet a specific condition of release, such as reaching your preservation age and retiring, turning 65, or a small number of other circumstances the ATO sets out, including severe financial hardship and specified compassionate grounds. Severe financial hardship release depends on your age against your preservation age: under that age, you need 26 continuous weeks of eligible government income support and to be unable to meet reasonable and immediate living expenses, with withdrawals capped between $1,000 and $10,000 and limited to one every 12 months; from preservation age plus 39 weeks, with a cumulative 39 weeks of income support and no current work, there’s no dollar cap — but you apply to your own fund directly, not the ATO. Compassionate-grounds release runs through the ATO instead and requires meeting five conditions together: residency, an expense that fits an eligible category, the expense unpaid or not fully repaid, no other reasonable way to cover it, and evidence for all of the above. Buying a first home has never been one of the general conditions of release. That gap is exactly why FHSS exists: rather than opening up your whole balance, it created a separate, narrower pathway for a defined slice of voluntary contributions.

How much can you withdraw under the FHSS scheme?

FHSS doesn’t hand back everything you’ve put in — the amount you can request follows a set formula.

FHSS maximum release = 100% of eligible non-concessional contributions + 85% of eligible concessional contributions + associated earnings

The annual and lifetime caps

Eligible contributions are capped at $15,000 in any one financial year, and $50,000 in total, counted from 1 July 2017. Where you’ve made both concessional and non-concessional contributions, FHSS counts them on a first-in, first-out basis — your earliest eligible contributions are drawn on first. If a concessional and a non-concessional contribution were made at the same time, the non-concessional amount is counted first. Superannuation rules are complex and the consequences of getting a contribution or release wrong can be significant — seek advice from a licensed financial adviser or registered tax agent before acting.

What counts as “associated earnings”?

The earnings added to your release amount are notional. They’re calculated using the shortfall interest charge rate — a set ATO rate — rather than your fund’s actual investment return. Don’t read the figure as a proxy for how your super has performed: it’s a formula-driven top-up on the contributions themselves, not real fund earnings.

When do you get the money, and is it taxed?

Timing matters here as much as the dollar figures. You need to apply for and receive an FHSS determination from the ATO before ownership of the property transfers to you — the request has to happen ahead of settlement, not after. Once you’ve requested your release, you generally have 12 months from that request date to sign a contract to buy or build a home — a window that can start as early as 90 days before the request itself — and the ATO can extend that by another 12 months (to a maximum of 24 months total), which it generally does automatically unless there’s a reason not to. Miss the window entirely — without signing a contract or recontributing the released amount back to your super fund — and it becomes subject to FHSS tax: a flat 20% of your assessable FHSS released amount.

Tax treatment of the amount you receive isn’t something to guess at either. Before the money reaches you, the ATO withholds tax from the assessable portion of your release — the 85% concessional-contribution slice plus associated earnings; the 100% non-concessional portion isn’t taxed again, since you’ve already paid tax on that money. The withholding rate is set at your expected marginal tax rate (including the Medicare levy) less a 30% tax offset, or 17% if the ATO can’t estimate your rate. You then include the assessable amount in your tax return for the year you requested the release — which may not be the same year you actually receive the money — and the ATO recalculates your real liability using your actual marginal rate, crediting both the tax already withheld and the 30% offset. Tax outcomes depend on your circumstances — speak with a registered tax agent before acting.

What should you weigh up before using FHSS for your deposit?

Using FHSS isn’t a simple swap for saving in a bank account, and it isn’t automatically a win either — it’s a trade-off. Money you contribute follows super’s preservation rules until you’ve applied for and received a release, so if your plans change, you can’t just redirect it elsewhere on a whim. The requirement to get a determination before ownership transfers means you need to plan ahead of your property search rather than react once you’ve found somewhere. Weighed against that: the caps mean FHSS is one part of a deposit for most buyers, not the whole of it — at most $50,000 across every year you’ve contributed, against whatever your target deposit turns out to be (our guide to how much deposit you need to buy a first home works through that separately).

Which of these matters most depends on your income, your tax position, and how far off you are from buying. A registered tax agent or licensed financial adviser can model FHSS against simply saving the same money outside super, using your actual numbers.

Is FHSS the right way to boost your deposit?

That isn’t a question this article can answer for you. FHSS suits some first home buyers and not others, and the right call depends on your timeline, your income, and what else you’re using to fund a deposit — the Home Guarantee Scheme, a guarantor, straightforward saving, or some combination of these. A registered tax agent or licensed financial adviser can work through the caps, the timing and the tax treatment against your own circumstances before you commit any contributions.