Did your parents become permanent residents after 58? Under the rules, their years in India can’t count towards the Age Pension

A parent who becomes an Australian resident at 63 will be 73 before the residence test is met. The qualifying age is 67, but the Age Pension residence rules come first: 10 years as an Australian resident, at least five of them in one unbroken stretch. For parents who migrate from India in their sixties, that decade is the wait.

Australia and India have had a social security agreement in force since 1 January 2016, and the Department of Social Services says it helps people qualify for benefits “they might not otherwise get”. On the published rules, though, it can count only one kind of Indian time, and only for people who had lived here as residents for at least a year before turning 58.

The Age Pension residence rules start counting at permanent residence

Services Australia sets out the rule in a few lines. A person generally needs at least 10 years as an Australian resident in total, and for at least five of those years “there must be no break in your residence”. On the day they claim, they generally have to be a resident and in Australia.

Residence has a specific meaning: living in Australia as a citizen or permanent visa holder. Time on a visitor visa falls outside it, so the count begins with permanent residence. Refugees and former refugees are exempt from the 10-year rule. A woman whose partner dies while both are residents has a shorter route: 104 unbroken weeks of residence immediately before she claims.

One Indian scheme, and only from 2016

On the Australian side, the agreement covers a single payment, the Age Pension. It works by adding Australian residence to periods of coverage in India, and the two together must reach 10 years.

The detail is in which Indian periods qualify. Services Australia’s factsheet on the agreement, accurate as at July 2025, says: “Only periods of insurance in India after 1 January 2016 may be used.” The department’s guide adds a second filter: “Only a period of contributions to the EPS can be used to totalise for Australian age pension.” The EPS is India’s Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995, a pension for employed people that sits within the country’s provident fund law.

So a career in India that ended before 2016 adds nothing, however long it was. Nor do years spent outside that scheme.

Twelve months here before turning 58

Anyone who needs Indian periods to reach the 10 years must also have at least 12 months of what the rules call Australian working life residence, six months of it continuous. Under the India agreement, those months must fall between 16 November 1995 and age 58.

Both markers match India’s own scheme. The Employees’ Pension Scheme came into force on 16 November 1995, and the department’s glossary calls 58 the Indian retirement age.

On that wording, a parent who first becomes a resident at 58 or older has no months to count, whatever was paid into the EPS. By simple arithmetic, those who become residents by their 57th birthday and stay will reach 10 years of residence by 67 without the agreement. That leaves it for lives split between the two countries, such as a man who lived here as a permanent resident in his forties, went back to work in India for an employer that paid into the EPS after 2016, and later returned.

An Indian pension comes off the top

The agreement also changes how an Indian pension is treated. For people living in Australia who rely on it, the guide says the Indian benefit is “directly deducted from the maximum rate of Australian age pension”. The income and assets tests are then applied against that lower maximum, and the lower of the two results is paid.

That lasts only while the agreement is needed. Once the person has 10 years of Australian residence in their own right, the Indian pension “will be treated as ordinary income”. A direct deduction takes the whole Indian payment off the maximum rate, while under the income test, income above a free area reduces the pension by 50 cents in the dollar for a single person and by 25 cents in the dollar for each member of a couple.

Two rules apply with or without the agreement. The agreement has no clause making a claim for an Indian pension compulsory, but under social security law Services Australia can issue a legal notice requiring someone claiming or receiving the Age Pension to take reasonable action to claim a comparable foreign payment. The agency also counts income and assets held in another country when it works out the rate, converting them at exchange rates.

The years in between

Some visa rules run on the same clock. For contributory parent visas, the Assurance of Support lasts 10 years, from the parent’s arrival or the visa grant, whichever is later. Services Australia describes it as the assurer’s promise to repay any income support it pays the migrant. For most other visas, it runs for four years.

The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card runs to a different clock. It is a concession card for cheaper health care, open to residents of Age Pension age who are not on a pension or benefit and who meet an income test. The department’s guide expects a small number of low-income claimants to be people who miss out on the Age Pension because of the assets test or residence requirements. For visas granted from 1 January 2019, the card carries a four-year newly arrived resident’s waiting period, and only time physically spent in Australia counts towards it.

The agreement asks two things of a parent: contributions to India’s Employees’ Pension Scheme since 2016, and a year of residence here before 58. A parent without both is counted by the residence rules alone, one year at a time, until there are 10.