Commonwealth Seniors Health Card: Eligibility, Income Test and Deeming (2026)

General information only. This is not tax or financial advice, nor financial-counselling advice. Income thresholds and deeming rates are indexed and change periodically — confirm current figures with Services Australia before relying on them.

The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) sits in an odd spot: it’s a Services Australia concession card, but you don’t need to be receiving any income-support payment to get one — in fact you can’t be. It’s built for self-funded retirees who are past Age Pension age but earn or hold too much to qualify for the Age Pension itself. Because the income test runs on adjusted taxable income (ATI) rather than the Age Pension’s ordinary income test, and because it pulls in deemed income from account-based pensions, it’s one of the few Centrelink-adjacent tests that behaves like a tax calculation more than a welfare means test.

Who qualifies

To get a CSHC, you must meet all of the following:

• Not be receiving a social security pension or benefit, or a DVA service pension or income support supplement.
• Be of Age Pension qualification age — currently 67.
• Be an Australian resident (or hold a Special Category Visa) and be present in Australia when you lodge the claim.
• Have income below the applicable cut-off limits (below).
• Serve a Newly Arrived Resident’s Waiting Period if it applies.
• Meet Tax File Number requirements.

The first condition is the one that trips people up: CSHC is specifically for people who are not on the Age Pension or another income-support payment. If your income or assets are low enough to qualify for a part or full Age Pension, you’d generally get the Pensioner Concession Card that comes with it instead of a CSHC — see the comparison below.

The income test: adjusted taxable income

The CSHC income test is based on adjusted taxable income (ATI) for a reference tax year (usually the year before the current one), not the fortnightly ordinary-income test the Age Pension uses. Your ATI is the sum of:

• taxable income (excluding any First Home Super Saver scheme release amount),
• total net investment loss,
• target foreign income,
• employer-provided fringe benefits, and
• reportable superannuation contributions (including salary-sacrificed amounts).

Income doesn’t need to be above the tax-free threshold to count — a low-taxable-income retiree living substantially off superannuation can still have a large ATI once these add-backs apply. Use the CSHC calculator to screen the current limit and the Age Pension vs CSHC comparison to choose the right claim pathway.

The deemed-income component

Since 1 January 2015, account-based pensions and account-based annuities are assessed under the deeming rules for CSHC purposes, using the same mechanism as the Age Pension income test: your account balance is assumed to earn a fixed rate of return regardless of what it actually earns, and that deemed amount — not your real drawdowns — counts toward your ATI. Austax’s deeming rules (src/data/centrelinkRates.ts, shared with the Age Pension calculator) currently model:

• 1.25% on financial assets up to $66,800 (single) / $110,600 (couple, combined), and
• 3.25% on financial assets above those thresholds.

There’s a grandfathering carve-out: if you held a CSHC on 31 December 2014 and your account-based pension was purchased before 1 January 2015, that pension is not assessed as income for as long as you keep both the same card and the same pension. Start a new account-based pension, roll an existing one over, or let your CSHC lapse and reclaim later, and the deeming rules apply from that point on.

Income limits (2026)

The following annual ATI limits apply from 20 September 2025 (indexed again on 20 September each year):

Add $639.60 to the relevant limit for each dependent child in your care.

What the card actually gets you

Holding a CSHC gets you:

• PBS medicines at the concessional rate, and access to PBS prescriptions generally without charge for the rest of the calendar year once you reach the PBS Safety Net.
• Bulk-billed GP appointments at the GP’s discretion — the government pays doctors a financial incentive to bulk-bill concession card holders, but it isn’t guaranteed.
• A reduction in out-of-hospital medical costs above a threshold, through the Extended Medicare Safety Net.
• The Energy Supplement, if you qualify.
• Possible state, territory, local government or private-provider concessions on things like utilities, rates, transport and recreation — offered at each provider’s discretion and varying by state, not a guaranteed federal entitlement.

The card is valid for two years and is reissued near your birthday provided you still meet the eligibility rules.

CSHC vs Pensioner Concession Card

It’s easy to conflate the CSHC with the Pensioner Concession Card (PCC), but they sit on opposite sides of the income-support line:

• PCC is issued automatically to people actually receiving an income-support pension or payment — Age Pension, Disability Support Pension, Carer Payment, Parenting Payment Single, and certain long-term JobSeeker/benefit recipients. It exists to soften the cost of living for people whose primary income is a Centrelink payment.
• CSHC is for people who are not receiving any income-support pension or payment — typically self-funded retirees with enough super, investments or other assets that they don’t qualify for the Age Pension at all, but whose income still sits under the CSHC’s own (higher, ATI-based) limits.

Concession benefits from the two cards overlap substantially (PBS, bulk-billing incentives), but a PCC generally carries broader state-based concessions layered on top, because it signals you’re already on income support. If your income or assets ever fall enough to qualify for a part Age Pension, you’d move to a PCC (attached to that pension) rather than continuing on a CSHC.

Why this is a tax question as much as a welfare one

Because the CSHC test runs on adjusted taxable income — a figure built directly from your tax return plus deemed super income — the same moves that manage your tax position also manage your CSHC eligibility. Structuring how much you draw from an account-based pension doesn’t change your deemed income (deeming ignores actual drawdowns), but salary-sacrificing, realising a net investment loss, or a spike in reportable fringe benefits all flow straight through to your ATI and can tip you over a threshold. If you’re close to the single or couple limit, model your deemed income with the deeming calculator before you assume a CSHC application will succeed — and if you’re weighing CSHC eligibility against a part Age Pension, the Age Pension calculator applies the same deeming rules to the pension’s own income test so you can compare both pathways side by side.