Family Tax Benefit Account Payable notice

If you get Family Tax Benefit (FTB) you need to confirm your family income each year. If you don’t, we’ll send you an Account Payable notice.

You have 12 months from the end of the financial year to confirm your family income. If you don’t do this within 12 months, we’ll send you an account payable notice. This will ask you to pay back the full amount of FTB you got for the related financial year.

Why we send the notice

If you get a notice, it’s because you haven’t confirmed your family income details for the related financial year. We need your family income confirmed, so we can balance your FTB. We balance your payments to make sure we have paid you the right amount.

What you need to do

To have this debt reassessed, you need to confirm your family income by either:

Remember, if you have a partner we’ll also need their confirmed income. If they don’t need to lodge a tax return you should let us know.

You should do this before the due date in the notice.

You should call the families line if both of the following apply:

  • your FTB has stopped
  • you have special circumstances that meant you or your partner delayed confirming your income.

If you lodge a tax return, we’ll get your income details from the ATO once they process your tax return. If you have a partner, we’ll get this information for them as well. This can take up to 28 days from when you get the Notice of Assessment from the ATO.

If you or your partner don’t need to lodge, the easiest way to tell us is online.

If your Centrelink online account is linked to myGov you can sign in now to do this.

Sign in to myGov

If you don’t have a myGov account or a Centrelink online account you’ll need to create them.

You can also tell us using the Express Plus Centrelink mobile app.

We have tutorials to help you to use our online and mobile app services. View either of these online guides:

Read more about what you need to do so we can balance your family assistance payments.

After you’ve confirmed your family income we’ll reassess your debt and balance your family assistance payments. We’ll send you a letter once we’ve done this.

What happens if you and your partner lodged a tax return and got a notice

You don’t need to do anything else. This may be because the ATO is still processing your tax return. Read how to check the progress of your return on the ATO website.

We’ll get your income details from the ATO once they process your tax return. This can take up to 28 days from when you get your Notice of Assessment from the ATO.

We’ll then reassess your debt and balance your payments. We’ll send you a letter once we’ve done this.

What happens if you don’t confirm your family income

If you don’t confirm your income by the due date in the notice you’ll need to repay the money you owe. How you repay money will depend on if you either:

If you don’t take action to repay the money you owe we may take further action. We’ll do this by the date in the Account Payable notice.

If you don’t confirm your family income your fortnightly FTB payments may stop. We can’t pay your FTB fortnightly payments again unless you either:

  • lodge a tax return or tell us you don’t need to lodge one
  • pay back the amount in full.

Sometimes you won’t be able to start repaying the money you owe before the due date. Please talk to us if this is your situation.

Page last updated: 2 April 2024.
QC 37961