Addressing income apportionment

In April 2024, we restarted work on a small number of debt reviews and explanations we paused in mid-2021.

A recent decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) regarding income apportionment (Secretary, Department of Social Services and FTXB) has been appealed to the Full Federal Court. You can read the decision on the AAT website.

Until the Federal Court makes a decision, we’ll pause this work, as set out in the public statement of the Secretary of the Department of Social Services (DSS), available on the DSS website.

We’re writing to impacted customers to let them know what’s happening.

What happens to the work we restarted

We contacted a small number of customers from late April 2024 to discuss their review. This included information about how we’d work with them to recalculate their debt. We called this ‘Stage 1’.

We called and wrote to you to let you know if you were part of Stage 1.

We used updated income information provided by you, your employer or your financial institution to recalculate the debt.

We used the best option that was available, in this order:

1. Payslips with daily income information.
2. Payslips that show when you got paid.
3. Bank statements along with other evidence that shows when you got paid.
4. Information we have on record that you’ve reported to us.

If we finalised recalculating your debt as part of Stage 1, we sent you a letter explaining the outcome. If you received an outcome letter, this decision will remain in place.

That means if we recalculated your debt and you still owe money, you’ll need to repay the debt.

We want to help you repay money you owe in a way that best suits your situation. If you’re concerned, we have information on how to repay money you owe.

If we didn’t finalise recalculating your debt and you didn’t receive an outcome letter, your review or explanation will be paused. We’ll write to you to let you know.

How we’re handling paused debts

The pause we placed on repayments of some debts that occurred before 7 December 2020 will continue.

In November last year, we paused repayments for any debts that involved fortnightly income reporting and may have been directly affected by income apportionment.

In early April 2024, we paused repayments of more debts we found that may have been indirectly impacted by income apportionment.

These other debts may relate to payments that don’t need fortnightly income reporting, such as Family Tax Benefit.

This is a complex issue and we’re working to ensure we identify all affected debts. We’ll continue to pause other debts if we find they could be affected by income apportionment.

This means some people may get more than one notification about a debt pause.

If we need to pause your debt, we’ll send you a text message to let you know. We’ll then send you a letter with more detail on the specific debts we’ve paused.

This doesn’t mean we’ve waived your debt.

If you get a text message or a letter saying we’ve paused recovery of your debt, please don’t make any repayments on the debt.

If you get a payment from us, we’ll stop deducting repayments for the debt that has been paused.

If you have a direct debit arrangement set up with us, we’ll stop the arrangement while your debt is paused.

If you have regular BPAY payments or electronic transfers from your bank account, you’ll need to stop those yourself. If you have more than one debt, you can call our Income apportionment line to confirm which debt you should stop repayments for.

While these debts are paused, they might not appear in the Money you owe service in your Centrelink online account. However, they will appear in your debt statement. We have information to help you get a statement of debt.

If you have other debts that aren’t affected by the pause, recovery action will continue for those debts.

The pause will stay in place until further notice. If you need to discuss your paused debt, you can call our Income apportionment line to discuss.

What to do if you want your review to proceed

We understand that having an income support debt can affect different parts of your life. We also know that you may want to have your review with us processed so you can seek an external review.

If you need to have your review or explanation of decision processed, you can call our Income apportionment line and ask us to do this.

We’ll recalculate your debt using our current method. You’ll need to confirm with us that you’re happy for us to do this. You’ll also need to confirm you understand your debt may change in the future depending on the decisions of the Federal Court.

We’ll give you information about the Full Federal Court appeal and we’ll also explain your review and appeal rights.

What to do if you’re concerned about a debt you have

Some debts and reviews that we’ve paused may not be affected by income apportionment.

If we’re able to confirm that a debt is not affected by income apportionment, we may progress those reviews and restart recovery of that debt.

We’ll notify you before we restart recovering any debts that have been paused.

If you’re concerned about a debt you have, or you want to request a review, call us on our Income apportionment line.