Pension & tax
The Age Pension, explained.
Understand the factors Services Australia considers, what information matters, and where to confirm your own circumstances.
What may affect eligibility
The main factors.
- Age
- You must have reached Age Pension age. Services Australia publishes the current qualifying age.
- Residency
- Residency requirements generally apply, including a minimum period of Australian residence. Some international agreements can affect this.
- Income test
- Assessable income — including employment income and deemed income from financial assets — can reduce the rate paid. A Work Bonus may reduce how much employment income is counted.
- Assets test
- Assessable assets above a threshold can reduce the rate paid. The family home is generally not counted, but thresholds differ for homeowners and non-homeowners.
- Couples
- For couples, income and assets are generally assessed together, and rates and thresholds differ from those for singles.
- The lower result applies
- Both tests are applied and the one producing the lower rate is used. Thresholds and rates are indexed and change during the year.
The checker
A careful tool, not a guess.
Our Age Pension checker will walk you through your circumstances step by step. It will treat a missing answer as unknown — never as zero — and show the assumptions, rule version and effective date behind every result.
Official guidance