Effect on your existing payments and entitlements

It may affect your tax obligations, including:

• child support
• HECS liabilities
• Medicare Levy Surcharge
• public housing rent
• low income or other health care cards, or other associated concessions
• pensioner and beneficiary tax offsets.

Parental Leave Pay also affects:

• family assistance payments
• income support payments
• child support payments.

Family assistance payments

You can get Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Part A while you’re getting Parental Leave Pay if you’re eligible.

You and your partner can’t get FTB Part B while you’re getting Parental Leave Pay. You may get it at the end of your Paid Parental Leave period and on days you aren’t getting Flexible Paid Parental Leave.

If you get Parental Leave Pay for a child, you won’t get Newborn Upfront Payment or Newborn Supplement for them.

Parental Leave Pay and Dad and Partner Pay count as income in calculating family assistance payments. Family assistance payments includes FTB and Child Care Subsidy. Your family income estimate should include any Parental Leave Pay and Dad and Partner Pay you expect to get.

Income support payments

We count Parental Leave Pay as assessable income when we consider your and your partner’s eligibility for income support payments.

This means you and your partner may get a lower rate of income support while you get Parental Leave Pay. When your Parental Leave Pay ends, we’ll adjust your and your partner’s income support again.

In some cases, your income will be too high to keep getting your income support payment. If your income support stops, you can apply for it again after your Parental Leave Pay ends.

How to minimise an overpayment

You and your partner may get an overpayment if both of the following apply:

• you or your partner get an income support payment
• you choose a start date for Parental Leave Pay that’s in the past.

This is because we count Parental Leave Pay as income.

If you get an overpayment, you’ll have to pay us back.

You can minimise this by choosing a start date in the future. Read more about nominating a start date for Parental Leave Pay.

Child support payments

We treat Parental Leave Pay as income for child support purposes.

Parental Leave Pay and leave from work

The Paid Parental Leave scheme gives you a payment. It doesn’t give you an entitlement to leave from work.

It’s important to organise leave from work with your employer. You should try to do this at least 10 weeks before you plan to take leave.

You can get Parental Leave Pay as well as any of your existing employer provided paid or unpaid leave.

You can take Parental Leave Pay before, during or after any paid or unpaid employer funded leave. This includes all of the following:

• maternity or parental leave
• annual leave
• long service leave.

What it means if you got JobKeeper Payment

You couldn’t get income from JobKeeper Payment at the same time as Parental Leave Pay. You can get Parental Leave Pay after your income from JobKeeper Payment ended, if you didn’t work during that time. You may want to nominate the start date for Parental Leave Pay that’s after your income from JobKeeper Payment ended.

Paid Parental Leave and existing employer provided leave entitlements

Your employer may provide maternity or parental leave through an industrial agreement or law. If they do, they can’t withdraw your entitlement to that leave while the agreement or law is in effect. The Paid Parental Leave scheme doesn’t change any existing employer provided leave entitlements.

The Supporting Working Parents website has information about your rights:

• in the workplace while pregnant
• during parental leave
• when you return to work.