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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.
You need to confirm your income 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 will then 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 appear.
If you don’t need to lodge a tax return
You must tell us if you and your partner don’t need to lodge a tax return even if you’ve already told the ATO you don’t need to lodge.
We can’t balance your CCS unless you tell us how much income you or your partner got. Once we have this information we will balance your CCS.
You need to tell us if you or your partner don’t need to lodge a tax return. If you have a Centrelink online account that’s linked to myGov, you can sign in to do this and confirm your income for 2022-23.
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 the amount you got in your taxable income 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 in 2022-23
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 have balanced your CCS based on your tax return details, we’ll use this information to balance your FTB.
If you don’t need lodge a tax return and you’ve told either us or the ATO, we’ll use this information to also balance your FTB.
Read more about balancing FTB.