Addressing income apportionment

The government has announced steps to address the historical use of income apportionment.

The steps are:

• introducing new legislation to validate the historical use of income apportionment to calculate entitlements
• establishing a resolution scheme with a payment of up to $600 to go to people with debts impacted by income apportionment.

You can read the ministerial statement on the Department of Social Services website for more information.

If you have an impacted debt, you don’t need to do anything at this time. Legislation will need to be passed before we can begin these next steps.

More information about next steps and eligibility for the resolution scheme will be available following the passage of legislation.

How we’re handling paused debts

Repayments for any debts affected by income apportionment will remain on hold until the new legislation is passed.

In November 2023, we paused repayments for any debts that involved fortnightly income reporting and may have been directly affected by income apportionment.

In early April 2024, we paused repayments of more debts we found that may have been indirectly impacted by income apportionment.

These other debts may relate to payments that don’t need fortnightly income reporting, such as Family Tax Benefit.

This is a complex issue and we’ve been working to ensure we identify all affected debts. We’ll continue to pause other debts if we find they could be affected by income apportionment.

This means some people may get more than one notification about a debt pause.

If we need to pause your debt, we’ll send you a text message to let you know. We’ll then send you a letter with more detail on the specific debts we’ve paused.

This doesn’t mean we’ve waived your debt.

If you get a text message or a letter saying we’ve paused recovery of your debt, please don’t make any repayments on the debt.

If you get a payment from us, we’ll stop deducting repayments for the debt that has been paused.

If you have a direct debit arrangement set up with us, we’ll stop the arrangement while your debt is paused.

If you have regular BPAY payments or electronic transfers from your bank account, you’ll need to stop those yourself. If you have more than one debt, you can call our Income apportionment line to confirm which debt you should stop repayments for.

While these debts are paused, they might not appear in the Money you owe service in your Centrelink online account. However, they will appear in your debt statement. We have information to help you get a statement of debt.

If you have other debts that aren’t affected by the pause, recovery action will continue for those debts.

The pause will stay in place until further notice. If you need to discuss your paused debt, you can call our Income apportionment line to discuss.

What happens to the work we restarted

We contacted a small number of customers from late April 2024 to discuss their paused review. This included information about how we’d work with them to recalculate their debt. We called this ‘Stage 1’.

We called and wrote to you to let you know if you were part of Stage 1.

If we finalised recalculating your debt as part of Stage 1, we sent you a letter explaining the outcome. If you received an outcome letter, this decision will remain in place.

That means if we recalculated your debt and you still owe money, you’ll need to repay the debt.

We want to help you repay money you owe in a way that best suits your situation. If you’re concerned, we have information on how to repay money you owe.

If we didn’t finalise recalculating your debt and you didn’t receive an outcome letter, your review or explanation will still be paused. We’ll write to you to let you know.

What to do if you want your review to proceed

We understand that having an income support debt can affect different parts of your life. We also know that you may want to have your review with us processed so you can seek an external review.

If you need to have your review or explanation of decision processed, you can call our Income apportionment line and ask us to do this.

We’ll recalculate your debt using our current method. You’ll need to confirm with us that you’re happy for us to do this.

What to do if you’re concerned about a debt you have

Some debts and reviews that we’ve paused may not be affected by income apportionment.

If we’re able to confirm that a debt is not affected by income apportionment, we may progress those reviews and restart recovery of that debt.

We’ll notify you before we restart recovering any debts that have been paused.

If you’re concerned about a debt you have, or you want to request a review, call us on our Income apportionment line.