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We have information in different languages about Balancing Child Care Subsidy
For Centrelink payments and services, you can call our multilingual phone service.
The financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June. We start to balance CCS payments in mid August. You need to confirm your income for the financial year before we can balance your payments. If you have a partner, they’ll need to do this too.
If you’re unsure what you need to do to balance your payments you can check using our What families need to do at tax time tool.
If you lodge a tax return
Once you or your partner lodge tax returns, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will tell us your incomes. We’ll use this information to balance your CCS.
Some Centrelink payments won’t be pre filled in your tax return, read more about what payments don’t show on it.
If you don’t need to lodge a tax return
You must tell us if you or your partner don’t need to lodge a tax return even if you had no income, or you’ve already told the ATO you don’t need to lodge.
We can’t balance your CCS until you tell us how much income you or your partner got.
If you have a Centrelink online account that’s linked to myGov, you can sign in to do this and confirm your income after 1 July.
If you don’t have this set up, you’ll need to use either your:
Some payments won’t prefill when telling us you don’t need to lodge a tax return online. They also won’t appear on your Centrelink payment summary. You must include all adjusted taxable income you got from Centrelink and any other income you had. This is so we can balance your payments correctly.
Read more about payments that don’t show on your Centrelink payment summary.
If you separated from a partner during the financial year
Call the Centrelink families line if you separated from your partner and you don’t know if they’re going to lodge a tax return, or if they don’t need to lodge.
How long you have to confirm your income
There are time limits for how long you have to confirm your income. Read about the time limits for CCS.
If you got Family Tax Benefit (FTB)
It’s important to keep in mind that we balance FTB and CCS separately.
If we’ve balanced your CCS based on your tax return details, we’ll use this information to balance your FTB.
If you’ve told us that you don’t need to lodge a tax return and confirmed your income, we’ll use this information to also balance your FTB.
Read more about balancing FTB.
Contact numbers available on this page.
Centrelink families line
Use this line if you need help with family payments, such as Family Tax Benefit, Child Care Subsidy or Parental Leave Pay.
There are other ways you may want to contact us.