Westover said there has been a gradual phasing up of retirement age regarding accessing super from 55 to now 60 for anyone born after 30 June 1964.

“Once you've reached your preservation age, we then look at your work circumstances to see whether or not you can satisfy the retirement condition of release and if you were lucky enough for your preservation age to be under 60 – younger than 60 when you ceased employment – and you retired with the intention of never working again, you satisfied that condition of release and your benefits went from preserved to unrestricted non-preserve from the age of 60 and 65,” she said.

“It doesn’t mean you have to give up work in its entirety, you can cease an employment arrangement, then you satisfy the condition of release to your benefit at that time to become unrestricted, non-preserved.”

Westover said that equally though, if you did retire to never work again, you satisfy the condition of release and the benefits become unrestricted and non-preserved.

“It's the ceasing of an employment arrangement after attaining the age of 60 that is important, and you have got to be really careful around if you continue to work,” she said.

“In all of that, if your intention is that that will work again, you can only retire if you did work. For most people, you will have worked at some point in your life, but some people may never have worked.”

Shelley Banton, head of education for ASF Audits, said the ATO is cracking down on illegal early release and the ramifications of that is a record number of SMSF trustees being disqualified by the commissioner.

“There are many reasons why SMSF trustees help themselves to cash out of their funds, but there are only a few ways in which it's legal for them to do so,” Banton said.

Banton said there are two types of member accounts: an accumulation or pension account, of which you can have only one, and a pension account that starts when a member has met a condition of release.

“You can have multiple pension accounts but that depends on how much you have in your accumulation and when you start your pension account every year,” she said.

Westover said there are over 20 separate conditions of release to get access to super, but that when people talk about retirement they think of a retirement age of 65 years, which is the “magic number” at which you can access benefits regardless of your working situation.

“Most people start accessing their super from preservation age, up until age 65, but there are still some work tests and other criteria they need to meet,” she said.

“You might be able to get access to your super through other things like compassionate grounds, financial hardship, very low balances under $200 but they do get quite niche in being able to access superannuation with these.”