Advice for your PSS benefit.

Yes. PSS is administered by CSC, the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, which has been the trustee since 2011. Until 1 July 2015 day-to-day administration was handled by a separate statutory body, ComSuper, which merged into CSC on that date. CSC now administers CSS, PSS, PSSap and the military schemes. If your older paperwork still says ComSuper, you're looking at the same scheme.

ComSuper merged into the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation (CSC) on 1 July 2015. CSC is now the trustee and administrator of PSS, CSS, PSSap and the military schemes. ComSuper isn't a live fund. Searches for a ComSuper pension, a ComSuper CPI increase or ComSuper PSS are about benefits CSC pays today.

It comes down to when you joined. CSS closed to new members on 30 June 1990, so if you joined the Australian Public Service before then you're generally in CSS. If you joined between 1 July 1990 and 30 June 2005 you're generally in PSS. After 30 June 2005, new APS employees went into PSSap, which is an accumulation scheme and works completely differently. Some people switched from CSS to PSS when PSS opened, and the CSC statement will say. If you've moved in and out of the public service, or transferred between agencies, confirm rather than assume. We check it as a matter of course.

PSS is a closed defined benefit scheme for people who joined eligible employment from 1 July 1990 to 30 June 2005. The core benefit is final average salary times your accrued benefit multiple rather than an account balance — though some members also hold accumulation amounts (transfers and government contributions) alongside it. PSSap is the accumulation plan for current and former APS employees. From 1 July 2005 it was the default for new APS staff, and eligible government employers contribute at least 15.4% of super salary into PSSap. They can sit together. A contributing PSS member may be eligible to open a PSSap ancillary account for salary sacrifice, spouse contributions, non-APS employer SG, extra insurance and rollovers that PSS can't accept. Hitting the PSS Maximum Benefit Limit is a reason CSC itself names for opening one. Claiming PSS as a lump sum and rolling it out ends the defined benefit and the lifetime CPI pension.

No. 54/11 is a CSS rule, not a PSS one. CSC's glossary defines it as ceasing employment at least two calendar days before age 55, electing to preserve the CSS benefit within 21 days of finishing, then claiming a Deferred Benefit on or after 55. People who search PSS 54/11 are almost always in CSS, or mixing the two schemes up. If your statement says CSS, see our CSS advice page.

Two numbers multiplied together. Your final average salary — typically the average of your super salaries on each of your three birthdays before you leave PSS — times your accrued benefit multiple, usually shortened to ABM. Your ABM grows according to how much you were contributing. Once you've satisfied the ten year rule, the annual accrual is 0.11 plus twice your contribution rate: contributing at 5% builds 0.21 a year, contributing at 10% builds 0.31. Before that rule is satisfied, a rate above 5% is throttled. CSC's published table shows a 10% contributor accruing 0.26 a year rather than 0.31. For example, contributing at 5% for 30 years builds a multiple of about 6.3 — on a final average salary of $110,000, a benefit of roughly $693,000. Contributing at 10% for the same period gives about 8.8 after allowing for the lower accrual rate in the first ten years, or roughly $968,000. That's around $275,000 more for the same salary and service. The result isn't simply double because different accrual rates apply.

It's the number the scheme multiplies your final average salary by to work out your benefit. It grew fortnightly across your membership, at a rate that depended on the contribution rate you chose and the hours you worked. Two people on identical salaries who retire on the same day can receive very different amounts because one contributed more over the years.

Take the part of your benefit you convert and divide it by the pension conversion factor for your age. At 55 the factor is 12, at 60 it is 11, and at 65 it is 10, dropping 0.2 for each year in between. A $700,000 benefit taken at 60 is roughly $63,600 a year, rising with the cost of living, for life. Taken at 55 the same benefit gives about $58,300 a year — less each year, but paid for five more years. CSC works the factor out on your age in years and days, not whole years, so your claim date moves the answer. Those factors apply to ordinary retirement pensions — invalidity pensions before 60 use a fixed factor of 11, and electing a higher spouse benefit pays 93% of the ordinary pension. Treat the figures as an estimate to orient you, not a quote.

Once you're eligible, CSC lets you take all pension, all lump sum, or part pension and part lump sum. If you take any pension, at least half the defined benefit has to go to pension, so the cash lump sum can't exceed 50%. The pension is paid for life and adjusted twice a year in line with the Consumer Price Index; it transfers investment and longevity risk away from you, but that capital is no longer yours to spend or leave. A lump sum gives you control of the capital and how it's invested, and you carry the investment risk and have to plan how long the money needs to last. A pension may continue in part to an eligible spouse and can include an election for a higher dependant pension in return for a lower pension of your own. A lump sum may be taxed on the untaxed component, and the estate outcome depends on the option selected and how long the benefits are paid. Taking a full lump sum means the lifetime indexed pension can't be bought back. The comparison can use your final average salary, benefit multiple, age, tax position, other income and estate-planning preferences.

There are two separate limits and they apply in different ways. The first is about proportion. CSC puts it this way: you may convert a minimum of half, or up to all, of your defined benefit to a lifetime indexed pension. Turn that around and it means if you take a pension at all, the lump sum can't exceed 50% of your defined benefit. If you take no pension, the whole benefit can come out as a lump sum — provided you've met a full condition of release: reached preservation age and permanently retired, ceased an employment arrangement on or after 60, or turned 65. The second is about cash. Before you reach preservation age, the amount PSS can pay you as cash is capped at your SIS upper limit. CSC defines that as the amount you could have taken as a lump sum had you been made redundant on 1 July 1999. It isn't a proportion of your benefit and you can't work it out from a table, but it comes back on a benefit estimate. Anything above it isn't lost; it has to be rolled over to another super fund rather than paid to you. Members who joined after 30 June 1999 have no pre-1999 amounts, so their pre-preservation-age cash options are correspondingly restricted. Preservation age is 55 for anyone born before July 1960 and rises to 60 for anyone born after 30 June 1964. Take part of your benefit as a lump sum and preserve the rest and you can never convert that balance to a pension. And anything left preserved has to be claimed by 65 — if you haven't claimed within three months of your 65th birthday it can only be paid as a lump sum, and the pension option is gone.

The pension, often yes. The cash, usually not, and the gap between those two is the real difference from an ordinary super account. Your minimum retiring age in PSS is generally 55. From then you can take your whole defined benefit as an indexed pension, provided you've permanently retired from the workforce — which CSC defines as not intending to be gainfully employed for more than ten hours a week. Preservation age doesn't hold that pension back. It does hold back cash. Any lump sum paid to you before preservation age can't exceed your SIS upper limit, and the balance has to be rolled over to another fund rather than handed to you. From 60, ceasing an employment arrangement can release the benefit even if you keep another job. At 65, access is unrestricted even if you're still working. A PSS defined benefit can't be taken as a CSC transition-to-retirement pension. Check your own position rather than assuming the general super rules apply.

Leave eligible employment, or opt out, and the defined benefit usually stays in PSS as a Preserved Benefit. While it's preserved, the member and productivity components earn the fund's investment return — Default or Cash once preserved — and the employer component is adjusted with upward CPI. It becomes payable at 65, and the pension election stays open until three months after your 65th birthday — after that only a lump sum remains, interest stops accruing, and the benefit can eventually be treated as unclaimed. A later pension is available only if the entire defined benefit was preserved. Take any of it as cash on the way out, or part-preserve, and the remainder is lump sum only. Once you're eligible you can still choose full pension, part pension and part lump sum (lump sum no more than half), or full lump sum, subject to cashing restrictions.

A ceiling on the defined benefit you can build as a contributing member. CSC adjusts the thresholds each 1 July in line with AWOTE (average weekly ordinary time earnings). For 2026–27: if your average salary is under $97,000 your limit is $970,000, and at $97,000 or over it is 10 times your average salary. The year before, 2025–26, the figures were $93,000 and $930,000. Reaching it changes your contributions, not just your benefit. CSC monitors members approaching their MBL and notifies your employer when you reach it — you're no longer permitted to contribute to PSS, and your employer stops member and productivity contributions. Super salary is still reported each birthday. Your final benefit still depends on your final average salary when you claim, not when you hit the limit. Transfer amounts after 31 December 1995 and government contributions don't count toward the MBL. If you want to keep contributing somewhere, CSC notes a PSSap ancillary account or another fund. Members who hit MBL before 1 January 2008, or who have AFP adjustment payments, need a CSC-specific calculation. Figures checked against CSC's published contributions guidance on 16 August 2026.

Until you've made 260 contribution due days — public service pay days, the equivalent of about ten years of full-time contributions — a contribution rate above 5% doesn't build your multiple at the full rate. Once you pass 260, your actual rate applies, up to 10%. Three things about it are commonly got wrong. The 260 days don't have to be continuous. They don't have to be your first ten years. And the rule only affects members contributing above 5% — if you contribute at 4% you accrue 0.19 a year either way. CSC does the calculation at the point you claim. So lifting your rate does much more once the 260 days are behind you than before. Many members set their rate years ago and haven't looked at it since — the effect of the rate today is something an estimate can show.

Yes. CSC adjusts PSS indexed pensions on the first payday in January and July, using the ABS quarterly All-Groups CPI for the eight capitals. January uses the September quarter; July uses the March quarter. The change is rounded to the nearest tenth of one percent. If CPI is flat or down, the pension doesn't fall. On the 16 August 2026 check, CSC's July 2026 increase was 2.0% for CSS and PSS, and January 2026 was 2.1%. If the pension hasn't been paid for the full six months, the increase is pro-rata.

No. The employer-financed part of a PSS benefit is unfunded — paid by the Australian Government when it falls due rather than built up and taxed inside a fund — so it's an untaxed element, and that element stays assessable income after age 60. The parts that did sit in the fund, and your own after-tax contributions, are treated the ordinary way and aren't taxed from 60. From age 60 a 10% tax offset applies to that untaxed component. CSC applies it to your fortnightly pension automatically — you don't have to claim it. An offset reduces the tax you owe rather than the income you declare, so it softens the bill without removing it. There’s a ceiling. For 2026–27 the concession applies to defined benefit income up to $131,250 a year; untaxed income above that doesn't attract the 10% offset, which caps the offset at $13,125. Your pension usually isn't taxed as one amount. It's made up of parts that are taxed differently — some tax-free, some already taxed inside the fund, and the government-funded part taxed at your marginal rate with the offset described above. That's why the amount that lands in your bank account won't match the gross figure on your statement, and why two members with the same gross pension can take home different amounts. CSC reports the breakdown of your parts on your statement and benefit estimates.

The treatment depends on how the benefit is taken. A pension is assessed under the income test and a defined benefit income stream is exempt from the assets test. A lump sum becomes an ordinary asset and may be assessed under both the assets test and the deeming rules. How much that exemption matters depends on your full Centrelink position, and it can be significant near the assets test cut-off. Under the income test Centrelink counts the gross pension less a deductible amount. That deductible amount is the tax-free component of your pension — broadly, the part built from your own after-tax contributions — and your fund works it out and reports it. Since 1 January 2016 it can be no more than 10% of your gross payments. So it's up to 10%, not a flat 10%, and for many PSS pensioners it's well below that, because the tax-free share of an untaxed scheme pension is usually small. The same benefit can produce two quite different Age Pension outcomes. If a part Age Pension is realistic for you, it belongs in the decision from the start.

CSC lists seven options: preserve the whole benefit; take part as a lump sum and preserve the rest; take the whole benefit as a lump sum; convert the whole benefit to a pension for life; take a pension with a transfer amount; take part pension and part lump sum; or transfer the value to one of a short list of other schemes. On redundancy, converting the whole benefit to a CPI-indexed pension payable for life may be available before age 55. Age and work status affect the lump sum options. Below your minimum retiring age — generally 55 — cash is limited to the lesser of your member contributions plus earnings and your SIS upper limit. Between 55 and 60, if you haven't permanently retired from the workforce, immediate cash is limited to your member component up to that same SIS upper limit, with any compulsorily preserved excess rolled over. Once you've permanently retired, or reached 60, you can take as much as you like. If you want part pension and part lump sum, the lump sum is capped at half your total defined benefit as well. Two rules are important. If you take part of the benefit as a lump sum and preserve the balance, you give up the right to a PSS pension on that balance. You also have 90 days from finishing to submit your election — confirm with CSC what applies if no election is made, and note that from age 65 an unclaimed benefit may be paid to the ATO. What you preserve keeps growing: the employer component rises with the consumer price index, and the member and productivity components earn the fund's investment return. You can't preserve at all once you're 65.

Contributing PSS members under 60 have automatic Death and Invalidity cover at no extra member cost. For a full benefits member the death lump sum is based on the invalidity retirement benefit as if they had worked to age 60. Limited benefits members — a classification CSC applies under its medical assessment rules — get only the benefit accrued to the date of death, as a lump sum, with no pension. Who is paid is the eligible spouse and eligible children; if there are none, usually the estate. An eligible spouse of a full-benefits member can choose pension, lump sum or both; children's entitlements depend on the family's circumstances. Super in PSS doesn't simply follow a Will. Extra cover is ADIC, Additional Death and Invalidity Cover: you need to be under 60 and contributing, and the employer pays half the standard premium.

Transfer options are limited. A preserved PSS benefit can't be rolled to a fund of your choosing. A transfer value can only go to a short list of eligible schemes — DFRDB, the Northern Territory and Queensland parliamentary schemes, the NT Government scheme and UniSuper Accumulation 2, as CSC listed them in November 2025 — and only if you preserved your entire benefit and that fund agrees to take it. What you can do is claim a lump sum and then roll that money over. But that's a different act with permanent consequences: it ends the defined benefit — a benefit worked out from salary and service rather than an account balance — and access to a lifetime pension that keeps pace with the cost of living. Neither can be bought back. Compare the permanent consequences before deciding whether to claim and roll over a lump sum.

Returning to Australian Government employment needs separate consideration. If you go back to a designated employer with a preserved PSS benefit, rejoining PSS is generally a requirement rather than a choice, unless you opt out or the role is non-ongoing. And rejoining isn't a neutral act: CSC cancels your preserved benefit and credits you with a preserved multiple that’s added to your new membership. Everything is then worked out against the final average salary of the new job. If you return at a lower classification, that arithmetic can work against you. Work the effect out before you accept the role, not afterwards.

Yes. We can advise on your existing PSS benefit. If another option is relevant, we'll explain why and compare it with your current arrangement before recommending a change.

The first conversation is free and takes about half an hour. Tell us what you'd like to discuss and we'll explain if and how we can help, including any fees, before you decide to go ahead.