If your income changes or is wrong

Lodge an estimate of your income

You can ask us to base your child support assessment on an estimated adjusted taxable income if:

• you lodged your tax return or advised us of your adjusted taxable income for the year used to calculate child support payments, and
• your current adjusted taxable income has reduced by 15 per cent or more than the income used in the assessment, or
• you already lodged an estimate for this child support period more than two months ago and the new estimate is for a different amount.

You may not be able to lodge an estimate for any part of your assessment that is based on:

• an agreement
• a determination made under the change of assessment process
• a court order.

Click here for more information about estimating your income.

To find out more about your options, including how to lodge an estimate call us on 131 272.

Lodge your tax return

The best way to ensure your child support is correct, is to lodge your tax return on time every year. All parents need to lodge a tax return or tell us their income.

If you aren’t required to lodge a tax return, lodge a Request for Taxable Income Details form.

If you have not lodged a tax return for two years and we can’t determine your income from you or other information we have, we will use a default income of two thirds of an annual weekly earnings figure published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics each year.

If you lodge your tax return late, unless there are exceptional circumstances we won’t be able to backdate a reduction to the default income.

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