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We have information in different languages about Balancing Family Tax Benefit
For Centrelink payments and services, you can call our multilingual phone service.
You usually need to confirm your income before we can balance your payments. If you have a partner, or had one during the year, 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 your tax returns, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will tell us your incomes. We will then use this information to balance your FTB.
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 need to tell us if you and your partner don’t need to lodge a tax return.
In some cases, we can’t balance your FTB unless you tell us how much income you or your partner got.
Once we have this information we will balance your FTB.
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:
- Centrelink online account through myGov
- Express Plus Centrelink mobile app.
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
If you separated from a partner during the financial year, we’ll balance your FTB after you confirm your income. We’ll use the income estimate provided for your ex-partner, if they haven’t lodged a tax return yet.
We balance Child Care Subsidy (CCS) and FTB separately. We can’t use an income estimate to balance CCS payments if you’ve separated from your partner. Read more about Balancing CCS.
If you were single and got an income support payment
If you were single and got an income support payment for the financial year, you might not have to do anything for your FTB to balance. Read more about FTB balancing if you were single and got an income support payment.
If you got Child Care Subsidy
It’s important to keep in mind that we balance FTB and balance CCS separately.
If you got CCS you’ll need to confirm your income, even if you don’t need to for FTB. Read more about balancing CCS.