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To do this we balance your family assistance payments.
Private Collect
We balance your FTB Part A based on the amount of child support we assessed you 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 then the amount of child support you were eligible for may increase. If this happens we’ll update your FTB Part A. This may happen whether or not you receive the child support owed to you by the paying parent. This could result in an FTB overpayment, or debt, that you need to repay.
Example of how we balance your 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 payable for that period will go up.
Child Support Collect
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. If you got more than we assessed you to receive, you may get an overpayment, which we’ll start collecting immediately. We can also use tax refunds to recover the overpayment.
If you don’t use all of your Maintenance Income Free Area, you may access the Maintenance Income Credit. If you have a Maintenance Income Credit we can use this credit to reduce an overpayment. We can only do this if you receive child support arrears.