We balance FTB after the end of each financial year to check we paid you the right amount. Most families need to confirm their income to balance their payments.
If you get child support, the amount you receive can impact your FTB. How you collect your child support can also affect your balancing outcome. This includes if you collect using either:
- Private Collect
- Child Support Collect.
If you collect privately
We balance your FTB Part A using your child support assessment. This means we look at the amount of child support you were supposed to receive. We can’t pay you more FTB if you didn’t collect the full amount of child support.
If we change your child support assessment, the amount of child support you were entitled to may change. This can happen for a few reasons, including:
- your care arrangements change
- parent’s income changes.
If we change your child support assessment, we’ll also update your FTB Part A, and your payments may change. Your FTB may change even if you don’t collect the child support owed to you by the paying parent.
If we update your child support assessment, and backdate the start date, we will also recalculate the FTB you are entitled to. We’ll send you a letter if your rate of FTB changes and after we balance your FTB to let you know the outcome. Read more about how we recover debts at tax time.
If you want to talk to someone about your child support collection options, please call the Child Support enquiry line.
If there is a reason that makes it difficult for you to collect some or all of your child support, call the Families line to discuss your options. This includes reasons like financial abuse or family violence. In some situations, you may be eligible for a full or partial exemption from the Maintenance Action Test (MAT).
Find an example of FTB Part A changing when we update a child support assessment.
If you collect through Child Support
We balance your FTB Part A based on the actual amount of child support you received during the financial year. If you received less child support than we assessed you to receive, you may get a FTB top up when we balance your payments.
If you received more child support than we assessed you to receive, you may get a FTB overpayment. If you get a FTB overpayment, we’ll work with you to pay it back. We can also use tax refunds to recover the overpayment. We’ll send you a letter after we balance your FTB to let you know the outcome. Read more about how we recover debts at tax time.
If you didn’t use all of your Maintenance Income Free Area from a previous financial year, you may have a Maintenance Income Credit. We will apply this automatically when we balance your payments.
Find out more about the Maintenance Income Test and how we apply it when we balance your FTB.