Balancing Child Care Subsidy

The financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June. We balance CCS payments from mid-August. You need to confirm your family income for the financial year before we can balance your payments. If you have a partner, they’ll need to do this too.

If you’re unsure what you need to do to balance your payments, use our What families need to do at tax time tool.

If you lodge a tax return

Once you or your partner, if you have one, lodge tax returns, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will tell us your incomes. We’ll use this information to balance your CCS.

Some Centrelink payments won’t be prefilled in your tax return or show on your Centrelink Payment Summary, read more about what payments don’t show on it.

If you don’t need to lodge a tax return

You must tell us if you or your partner, if you have one, don’t need to lodge a tax return even if you had no income, or you’ve already told the ATO you don’t need to lodge.

We can’t balance your CCS until you tell us how much income you or your partner got.

If you have a Centrelink online account linked to myGov, you can sign in and tell us if you and your partner don’t need to lodge a tax return and confirm income for the financial year.

Sign in to myGov

If you don’t have a myGov account or a Centrelink online account, you’ll need to create them.

You can also tell us using the Express Plus Centrelink mobile app.

Some payments won’t prefill when telling us you don’t need to lodge a tax return online. They also won’t appear on your Centrelink payment summary. You must include all adjusted taxable income you got from Centrelink and any other income you had. This is so we can balance your payments correctly.

If you were affected by a declared natural disaster and got a government payment, you may need to include this as income. You must also include all taxable payments you got from other government departments, including some payments from Veterans’ Affairs.

Read more about payments that don’t show on your Centrelink payment summary.

If you separated from a partner during the financial year

Call the Centrelink families line if you separated from your partner and you don’t know if they’re going to lodge a tax return, or if they don’t need to lodge.

How long you have to confirm your income

There are time limits for how long you have to confirm your income. Read about the time limits for CCS.

If you got Family Tax Benefit (FTB)

It’s important to know we balance FTB and CCS separately. If you got CCS, you’ll need to confirm your income, even if you don’t need to for FTB.

If we’ve balanced your CCS based on your tax return details, we’ll use this information to balance your FTB.

If you’ve told us that you don’t need to lodge a tax return and confirmed your income, we’ll use this information to balance your FTB.

Read more about balancing FTB.