Costs and fees

What is the residential aged care Calculation of Your Cost of Care form?

Updated 24 August 2026

The SA457 is the form Services Australia uses for the aged care calculation of your cost of care, the financial check that sets what you pay towards an aged care home. Services Australia reads your income and assets from it, conducts the residential aged care means test, and sends you a fee advice letter listing your fees. Lodge the SA457 if you are moving into an aged care home, or already live in one, and you do not receive a relevant income support payment. People already on such a payment either send a different form or send nothing at all. The same assessment can also be lodged online through a Centrelink online account linked to myGov. Completing a means assessment is not mandatory, though a resident who keeps their means private can be charged at the maximum contribution rate.

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Who should lodge the SA457, and who should not

The SA457 belongs to people with no relevant income support payment who are entering, or already in, an aged care home. Services Australia publishes three cost of care forms and asks you to pick the one matching your circumstances. Five situations decide which form you lodge, or whether you lodge one at all:

• You are moving into an aged care home, or already live in one, with no relevant income support payment. The SA457 is your form. Services Australia holds no financial record to draw on here, and it needs one before it can work out your fees, so the form is how those figures reach it.
• You own, or part own, your home and receive a means tested income support payment. The SA485 property details form covers you. Your income and assets already sit in Services Australia's records through that payment. Home ownership does not, because it is not collected for pension purposes, and the SA485 fills that single gap.
• You receive a relevant income support payment and do not own the home you live in. No application is needed. Services Australia, or the Department of Veterans' Affairs, already holds the figures the assessment requires. Your records still need to be current before you move into care.
• Your income support comes from the Department of Veterans' Affairs as a means tested payment. DVA does the means assessment itself. Contact DVA on its general enquiries line about your aged care costs.
• You are getting, or considering, Support at Home. The SA456 is the Support at Home version of the calculation of your cost of care form, and it is the one Services Australia asks you to use.

Timing is open at both ends. You can apply while you are only thinking about aged care services, and you can apply once services have already started. Timing has one fixed end for homeowners: if you own the home you are living in, Services Australia needs to know about it before you move into an aged care home.

What happens if you do not lodge the form

If no application reaches Services Australia, your provider may charge you the maximum costs until the annual, lifetime and time limited caps stop the billing.

You also cannot pay for your accommodation with a refundable lump sum until either the means assessment is finalised or a "means not disclosed" status is recorded. Accommodation is billed as non-refundable daily payments until such a lump sum is paid.

How to lodge the SA457

Lodging the SA457 takes four steps, from choosing how to apply to answering any further request Services Australia makes after lodgement.

1. Choose the online application or the paper form. The online application uses your Centrelink online account through myGov, where you open the aged care application and follow the prompts. Submit within 13 weeks of starting, or the application expires and you begin again (Services Australia, page last updated 30 March 2026). The printed SA457 is the alternative.
2. Gather the supporting documents. Supporting documents are compulsory. Services Australia uses them to confirm what you have declared and cannot assess an application without them. Each form ends with a checklist of what to attach.
3. Send the completed form with those documents. A finished paper form can be uploaded through your Centrelink online account, posted to the address printed on it, or handed in at a service centre. Services Australia may ask you for more information if any of the supporting documents are missing.
4. Answer any further request within 21 days. After lodgement, Services Australia names anything else it needs, and you generally get 21 days to supply it. Miss that window and the application may be rejected (Services Australia, page last updated 20 November 2024).

What the means assessment counts

The means assessment counts two things: your income and your assets. The assessment is completed by computer, and information may be drawn automatically from your age pension means test (My Aged Care, retrieved 23 August 2026). Four rules shape what the assessment produces for couples, homeowners and residents with low income and assets:

• Couples are assessed on halves. The assessment splits a couple's combined income and combined assets down the middle, and each partner is assessed on half of the total. Who earned the income, or whose name holds the asset, makes no difference (My Aged Care, retrieved 23 August 2026). Partners living apart for health-related reasons can still be considered a couple.
• The family home counts only up to a cap. If you keep the family home, the assessment includes its net market value or a capped amount, whichever is lower. That cap is $214,884.00, recorded by My Aged Care as at 20 March 2026 and unchanged in the residential care fee schedule in force from 1 July 2026. Each partner in a couple counts as owning half of the home, so what gets included for that partner is half the home's net market value or the capped value, whichever is lower.
• A protected person removes the home from the assessment. Your home is not counted as an asset at all while a protected person lives in it. Your partner or a dependent child is a protected person. A carer qualifies too, if that carer is eligible for an income support payment from the Australian Government and has lived in the home with you for two years or more. A close relative eligible for that payment qualifies after five years or more in the home.
• Low income and assets remove accommodation costs. For a single resident, income under $35,521.20 and assets under $64,500.00 mean the Australian Government pays your accommodation costs in full, on the residential care fee schedule effective 1 July 2026. Both amounts change with indexation, so the income and asset levels that decide who pays for aged care in Australia are reset on each indexation date.

The income and asset amounts that decide accommodation costs are national, so they hold across the 224,493 aged care places the Elderberry directory records as at August 2026.

What you get back: the fee advice letter

The assessment produces a fee advice letter, and that letter is the operative document for your aged care costs. It sets out the basic daily fee, any hotelling contribution, non-clinical care contribution or means tested care fee that applies to you, and the accommodation amount. Your room is billed either at the agreed price as an accommodation payment, or at a stated maximum amount as an accommodation contribution. The home asks to see the letter once you agree to move in, because it shows what government help you receive with accommodation costs.

Which care fee appears on the letter depends on the fee arrangements you fall under. Anyone who enters an aged care home on or after 1 November 2025 falls under one of two sets of fee arrangements (My Aged Care, retrieved 23 August 2026). The 1 November 2025 arrangements include a basic daily fee, a hotelling contribution and a non-clinical care contribution. The 1 July 2014 arrangements include a basic daily fee and a means tested care fee. Four of those fee lines carry current maximums under the residential care fee schedule in force from 1 July 2026.

• Basic daily fee, both sets of arrangements. Everyone in an aged care home pays the basic daily fee, whatever their means, so the assessment does not decide whether you pay it. It equals 85% of the basic age pension's single person rate, and the government reindexes it every 20 March and 20 September. The current maximum is $66.80 a day, or $24,382 a year.
• Hotelling contribution, 1 November 2025 arrangements. The hotelling contribution is limited to the level of the hotelling supplement, $22.15 a day. Where the assessment asks you for part of that amount and not all of it, the government pays the rest.
• Non-clinical care contribution, 1 November 2025 arrangements. This contribution leaves out the cost of clinical care and is capped at $107.32 a day. It ends once your total contributions reach $137,917.01, or after four years of paying it, whichever happens first.
• Means tested care fee, 1 July 2014 arrangements. The means tested care fee falls anywhere between $0 and $372.03 a day, and two further caps limit what you can be asked to pay. The annual ceiling is $35,910.43 and the lifetime ceiling is $86,185.23. Indexation moves both ceilings in March and September.

The letter settles your contributions. The room price itself is agreed with the home you enter, and the Elderberry directory lists 2,590 aged care homes run by 708 providers as at August 2026, so what a nursing home costs depends on which of those homes you choose.

How long the fee advice letter lasts, and when your means status locks

A pre-entry fee advice letter lasts 120 days. The clock starts on the date of the means assessment, and both My Aged Care and Services Australia publish that limit, on pages retrieved 23 August 2026 and last updated 30 March 2026. You can have your means assessed at any point, well ahead of entering care, though a lapsed letter means a fresh assessment.

A second condition can void the letter. A pre-entry letter issued before 1 November 2025 prices your care under the older 1 July 2014 arrangements, and those figures may no longer hold for an entry dated 1 November 2025 or later, even inside the 120 days. Services Australia issues a fresh fee advice letter at the point you enter care, so any pre-entry letter is a provisional statement of your position.

Once you are in a home, your means status stops moving. Low means or not low means status is fixed by the income and assets you hold on the day you enter, and it holds for as long as you stay in that home, however your finances shift afterwards. Moving to a different aged care home is the exception: a new means assessment applies, and your means status and the type of accommodation costs you pay can change with it.

Common questions

Can I find out what I will pay before I lodge the form?

Yes, as an estimate. My Aged Care offers an aged care home fee estimator that walks through the fee types and produces a rough figure for your circumstances. Your real costs arrive only with a completed means assessment and the fee advice letter Services Australia issues from it.

Do I need to pay a financial adviser to complete the form?

No. The Financial Information Service at Services Australia is free and open to everyone, and its officers help you make informed financial decisions. Book an appointment on 132 300, saying you want the Financial Information Service when the line asks your reason for calling.

What if I disagree with the outcome of my means assessment?

Ask for a review. Services Australia, or DVA where DVA ran the assessment, will look at the decision again and come back to you with the next steps.

What do I do if my circumstances change after the assessment?

Tell Services Australia, or DVA, about anything that shifts your personal or financial circumstances. They update the assessment and reissue the fee advice letter from what you report. Reportable changes include a change in your marital status, a change in your financial status, selling your home, and paying a lump sum towards your accommodation.

What if I still cannot afford the fees the assessment sets?

If the costs are beyond you for reasons outside your control, you can still ask to be considered for financial hardship assistance. Financial hardship assistance can apply to the basic daily fee, the means tested care fee, or your accommodation costs, depending on your situation.

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