Providing first home saver accounts

Your obligations

You must not make a payment from a FHSA unless you are authorised by law.

You are authorised to make a payment from an account only where one or more of the following applies:

the payment is a FHSA home acquisition payment
the payment is a FHSA mortgage payment
the FHSA holder is aged 60 or over
the payment is a compulsory contribution of balance of an inactive FHSA to superannuation
the payment is a voluntary contribution to superannuation
the payment is a voluntary transfer of the balance of the FHSA to another FHSA
the payment is being made under a family law obligation

by contribution to the superannuation interest of the FHSA holder's spouse or former spouse in a complying superannuation plan, or
by transfer to an FHSA held by the FHSA holder's spouse or former spouse, or
to the FHSA holder's spouse or former spouse, if the spouse or former spouse is aged 60 or more

the payment is in relation to

subsection 25(2) (account holder aged 65 or more), 26(2) (inactive FHSA) or 27(2) (holder in breach of account balance cap), of the First Home Saver Accounts Act 2008, or
subsection 992A(4) (unsolicited offer of financial product), 1016F (defective product disclosure statement) or section 1019B (cooling-off period) of the Corporations Act 2001

the FHSA holder is deceased
the payment is an amount of fees owing to the FHSA provider for providing the FHSA
the payment is an amount owed to the Commonwealth for overpayments of government FHSA contributions.

If you make a payment from a FHSA that is not authorised by law, you may be penalised.

When closing a FHSA you should pay the entire balance where the account holder:

builds or buys a home
transfers to another provider
contributes their account balance to their super
withdraws their entire balance within the cooling off period
reaches 60 years of age and requests that their account be closed
reaches 65 years of age
dies.

A partial payment can be made without closing the account in these instances:

under a family law obligation
to pay provider fees from the account
to pay a trustee in bankruptcy
to repay overpaid government contributions
if the account holder is over 60 years of age and requests partial payment - the account then becomes inactive and any remaining balance must be contributed to their super.

If an account holder does not withdraw the entire balance, the account becomes inactive. You must contribute the remaining balance to their super fund within 14 days. The account holder will need to complete the Super contributions from a first home saver account (NAT 72537) form to nominate their super fund. If they do not nominate a super fund within 14 days, you must complete the Super contributions from a first home saver account (NAT 72537) form to contribute the balance to your default super fund and close the account.

See Contributing to super for information about closing an account and transferring the balance to the account holder's super fund.

Sections within Closing a first home saver account

Last Modified: Tuesday, 31 May 2011