We balance Family Tax Benefit (FTB) each financial year. This is so we can check we paid you the right amount. Most families need to do something 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. We can’t pay you more FTB if you didn’t collect the full amount of child support. We generally can only pay you based on the amount of child support you were assessed to receive.
If we change your child support assessment, then the amount of child support you were eligible for may change. This can happen for a number of reasons, including:
- your care arrangements change
- either parent’s income changes.
If we update your child support assessment, we’ll also update your FTB Part A and your payments may change. This may happen even if you don’t receive the child support owed to you by the paying parent.
If your child support assessment changes and the start date is backdated, this could result in an FTB overpayment that you need to pay back. 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 would like to talk to someone about your child support collection options, please call the Child Support enquiry line.
In some situations, you may be eligible for an exemption. If there is a reason that makes it difficult for you to collect your child support, call the Families line to discuss your options.
Example of how we balance your FTB Part A payment when you’re using Private Collect
When a paying parent lodges a tax return for a previous financial year, we get their actual income details. Their income may be higher than the income we used in the child support assessment. If this happens, the child support you were entitled to get for that period may go up. If it goes up and we paid you too much FTB, then this can result in an FTB overpayment.
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 an FTB top up when we balance your payments.
If you received more child support than we assessed you to receive, you may get an FTB overpayment. If you get an FTB overpayment, we’ll work with you to pay this 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 accrued 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.