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The country where the receiving parent lives makes the child support assessment.
The country where the paying parent lives may collect payments on behalf of the other country.
Paying child support to a parent in New Zealand
If you live in Australia and the other parent lives in New Zealand, Inland Revenue New Zealand (IRNZ) may refer your case to us. If they do, we’ll collect your child support payments and transfer them to IRNZ.
If IRNZ haven’t sent your case to us for collection, you should continue to pay them or contact them directly.
We don’t charge you a fee for this.
Changing your New Zealand assessment
Contact IRNZ if you want to change a New Zealand child support assessment.
How to pay us
The options for how you can pay child support are in the following table. Some methods have a small fee.
| Payment method | Details | What you need to do |
|---|---|---|
| Employer | Your employer deducts child support payments from your pay. We use this as the default payment option if you don’t nominate a different way to pay. | Call the Child support enquiry line to organise employer deductions. We’ll then write to your employer and ask them to do this. You’ll need to use another payment option until this starts. If you want to stop child support deductions from your pay, call the Child support enquiry line. You can also fill out the Application to stop deductions from salary or wages form. |
| Government payments | We can deduct your child support from payments you get from us or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. | Call us on our Child Support Enquiry Line for more information. |
| EasyPay | Pay safely online anytime through Australian Government EasyPay. | Use your credit or debit card. |
| BPAY® | You can use phone or internet banking. | Biller Code: 201509 Reference Number: your 16 digit payment reference number with no spaces. |
| Billpay | You can use Billpay at any Australia Post office. | You’ll need a payment advice slip. It’s on your payer account statement. Keep the receipt. |
| Send us an Australian currency cheque or Australian currency money order. | Make each Australian currency cheque or Australian currency money order to the Services Australia, Child Support. Attach the payment advice slip on your payer account statement with the payment. Send this to: Services Australia |
Call the Child Support Enquiry Line to discuss how to pay.
If you don’t pay
We’ll contact you to talk about why you haven’t paid and work out a payment plan. We’ll work with you to get the best result.
If we can’t agree on a payment plan with you, we can try to collect the overdue amount in other ways. We can:
- deduct money from your wages
- take legal action
- stop you leaving Australia
- take money from your Australian tax refund.
Late payment penalties
If Inland Revenue New Zealand (IRNZ) refer your case to us, it may include New Zealand penalties for collection.
We also charge Australian penalties for outstanding child support payments. You pay these to the Australian Government. They don’t come directly to us, the other parent or IRNZ.
If you pay the overdue child support in full we may waive the Australian penalties.
If you have questions about the New Zealand penalties, please contact IRNZ.
Receiving child support from a parent in New Zealand
You can either:
- arrange for the other parent to pay you directly
- ask us to collect payments for you.
Payments through Private Collect
This is where the other parent pays you directly. We’ll tell you the amount of child support payable but you arrange the payments privately.
Read about Private Collect.
Payments through us
If you ask us to collect payments for you:
- we’ll usually send your case to IRNZ
- they will register the case and start collecting payments.
It can take up to 6 months for payments to start.
Contact us if you don’t receive a payment within 6 months.
Overdue payments
If the paying parent doesn’t pay on time, IRNZ will collect the overdue amount using their laws.
Disbursement of payments collected by New Zealand
IRNZ will forward collected payments to us and we’ll pay these amounts to your bank account by the last working day of the month.
Tell us about changes
If things change that may affect your child support you must tell us. This includes:
- new contact details
- a new address
- new bank details
- a change of income
- a change in the care of the children.
If you have a New Zealand assessment you’ll need to contact IRNZ about changes in your circumstances
Changes to your circumstances may affect your child support assessment and the amount of child support we collect on your behalf. In some cases, we may only take changes affecting payment amounts from the day you tell us.
Read about changes of circumstances.
Moving between Australia and New Zealand
You must let us know as soon as either parent moves between Australia and New Zealand.
We have special arrangements with New Zealand that mean you pay child support through New Zealand or Australia but not through both.