Super on a temporary visa, and claiming it back when you leave (DASP), for OTs, speech pathologists and physios

Written by Callum Trevorrow. Last checked 28 October 2026 against official sources.

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Your employer pays super at 12% of your ordinary time earnings on top of your salary (ATO), and that can apply whatever your visa. If you’re on a temporary visa and later leave Australia for good, you can claim it back as a Departing Australia Superannuation Payment (DASP), but tax comes off first: 35% on the taxed element and 45% on any untaxed element, or 65% of the whole payment if any of it came from time on a working holiday visa.

This page is general information, not financial or tax advice. The ATO runs DASP, so check your own case on the ATO’s DASP page or with a registered tax agent.

What super is, and why it matters if you might go home

Superannuation is Australia’s retirement savings system. Your employer pays it into a super fund, not your bank account, so it doesn’t show in your take-home pay. The rate has been 12% of ordinary time earnings since 1 July 2025. The ATO says employers may be required to pay it for workers with work rights regardless of their visa or tax residency. When you compare offers, check whether the salary is quoted plus super or as a total package that includes it.

For a clinician on a 482 or a working holiday visa, that is real money building up in a fund you may never use in Australia. Whether you’ll stay or go decides what happens to it, so it’s worth knowing the exit rules on day one.

Choosing a fund when you start

• If you’re eligible to choose, your employer must give you a Superannuation standard choice form. Fill it in and give it back.
• If you don’t choose (or can’t), your employer pays into your existing fund, called your stapled fund. If you’ve never had an Australian fund, there’s nothing to staple, and the employer can pay into its default fund, one offering a MySuper product.
• The ATO suggests its YourSuper comparison tool for comparing MySuper products.

Compare before you hand the form back. Keeping to one fund also keeps leaving simpler: each fund pays its own DASP, so every extra fund is another claim.

DASP: who can claim it

According to the ATO you generally need to meet all of these:

1. You built up super while working in Australia on a temporary resident visa (not subclass 405 or 410).
2. Your visa has ceased, because it expired or was cancelled.
3. You’ve left Australia and hold no other active Australian visa.

It isn’t available to Australian or New Zealand citizens or Australian permanent residents. If you move from a 482 to a permanent visa, DASP no longer applies; your super stays in the system like anyone else’s.

How to claim, step by step

1. Start the application before you leave. The DASP online application system is free. You can start and save an application in Australia, though you can only submit it once you’ve left and no longer hold an active visa. The ATO “strongly recommends” starting before you go, because it can be hard to begin from overseas.
2. Get your ID certified while you’re here, if you need it. For balances of A$5,000 or more, a fund may ask for certified copies of your identity documents, and certifying is easier in Australia.
3. Submit after you’ve left and your visa has ended. Each fund pays its own DASP. Super the ATO already holds is paid by the ATO.
4. Paper is the fallback. Form NAT 7204 goes to each fund and NAT 74880 to the ATO for ATO-held super. Paper applications may need a Certification of Immigration Status from Home Affairs, which has a fee.
5. You can use a registered tax agent or another person with your written authority.

If you do nothing: once it’s been six months or more since you left and your visa has ceased, your fund transfers your super to the ATO as unclaimed super money. You can still claim it from the ATO.

DASP tax rates

The 65% rate is the one people miss. The ATO says that if you’ve held a working holiday maker visa and the payment includes contributions made while you were on it, the 65% rate applies to the entire payment, not just the working holiday part. So a clinician who arrives on a 417, then moves to a 482, should know that before deciding when and how to leave.

Bringing super from overseas

On the Australian side, the ATO treats a transfer from a foreign fund as a member contribution. Earnings that built up after you became an Australian tax resident (“applicable fund earnings”) are taxable, but none are if you transfer within six months of becoming a resident. After six months, you may be able to elect for the Australian fund to pay tax at 15% on some of them.

Your home country’s rules matter just as much as Australia’s. UK clinicians, see the pension section of the UK move guide. Everyone else, ask your home scheme and a licensed financial adviser before you move anything.

Where I come in

You’re talking to a physio and a service operator, not a sales team. Whether you’ll stay for good or go home after a few years is a fair question to ask before you arrive, and the DASP rules are part of the answer. We’d rather help you make the right move than a fast one.

Your next step

Your route into work decides which visa you’ll be on, and so which super rules apply when you leave.

• OTs: your Occupational Therapy Board route comes first, and it depends on where you trained. A UK (HCPC-approved, completed 2010–2030) or Irish (CORU-approved, 2015–2030) qualification, or a degree on the Board’s recognised list (30 listed programs from Canada, South Africa and the USA), goes to registration (A$250 application plus A$138 registration). New Zealand OTs with current registration and a practising certificate use Trans-Tasman mutual recognition. Otherwise it’s a portfolio assessment (A$688). OT registration for overseas OTs.
• Speech pathologists: Speech Pathology Australia assesses you, not Ahpra: the MRA (A$825, up to 7 weeks; Canadian S-LPs can’t currently use it) or the OSQCA (A$2,000 across four stages). Speech routes by country.
• Physios: your Australian Physiotherapy Council route comes first (Express FLYR A$1,742, FLYR A$3,490 or APEP A$8,321), then Physiotherapy Board registration (A$452 application plus A$220 registration). Physio routes by country.
• Pay, for all three: the award minimum for a first-year health professional (AQF 7) is A$1,308.80 a week, and Queensland Health’s HP3 grade starts at A$83,824. Super at 12% is paid on top of either.

The pathway check works out your route and likely visa, and tells you whether an info session or a call is the right next step. For tax on your super, tax in your first year covers the income side, and a registered tax agent can look at your own case.