If your income changes or is wrong
Lodge an estimate of your income
Child support assessments use your adjusted taxable income from a previous year. You can ask us to use an estimate of your adjusted taxable income for the current year if:
- your current assessment uses an adjusted taxable income from your tax return or
- your current assessment uses an adjusted taxable income that you have previously advised us, and
- your current adjusted taxable income has reduced by 15 per cent or more than the income used in the assessment.
If you have already lodged an estimate for this financial year, you can also lodge a new estimate for a different amount.
You may not be able to lodge an estimate for any part of your assessment that is based on one of the following:
- an agreement
- a determination made under the change of assessment process, or
- 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.
Lodging 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 do not lodge a tax return and we can’t work out your income from other information, we will use a provisional income to assess your child support. We do this by indexing your most recent Australian Tax Office (ATO) assessed income in line with wages growth.
If you lodge your tax return late, and we have used a provisional income to make a child support assessment, we may not be able to backdate any changes to your assessment if your ATO income is lower.
If you aren’t required to lodge a tax return, lodge a Request for Taxable Income Details form on CSAonline and contact us to let us know.