We need to know your income and family details before the new tax year starts on 1 April. If we ask you for details and do not get them, your Working for Families payments will stop.
Do you get your Working for Families paid weekly or fortnightly?
Your payments will be based on estimates of your family income and situation from before the start of the tax year (1 April).
In February or March, we’ll send you either a notice of entitlement or a letter asking for more information.
We may not need to contact you
If we have enough information about your family income and situation, we’ll estimate your Working for Families payments for you and give you a notice of entitlement without contacting you.
If our information looks correct, you do not need to do anything. From 1 April you’ll automatically receive the payments shown in your notice.
Let us know if changes are needed
If something is wrong, please update your details in myIR or let us know in some other way.
Working for Families and Best Start - contact us
Notice of entitlement ─ what you’ll get in the year ahead
Your notice of entitlement lets you know your Working for Families entitlement for the coming tax year (1 April – 31 March). On the notice you’ll see:
- how much you’ll get every week or fortnight
- when you’ll get your payments
- the family income and details we use to work out your entitlement.
Salary and wage earners
If you earn a salary or wage, we may be able to estimate your entitlement using information we get from you or your employer.
When we do not have enough information, we’ll send you a letter (see ‘Letter ─ extra information needed’ below).
If you do not reply to the letter before 1 April, your payments will stop.
Other customers
If you file an Individual income tax return ─ IR3 (for example, you’re self-employed), we might estimate your entitlement using information from either of your previous 2 years tax returns.
When we do not have enough information, we’ll send you a letter (see ‘Letter ─ extra information needed’ below).
If you do not reply to the letter before 1 April, your payments will stop.
Letter ─ extra information needed
We may send you a letter asking for information we need to work out your payments from 1 April.
When we hear back from you, we’ll send you a notice of entitlement showing your payments for the coming year.
Please respond to our letter.
If we do not get the information we need before 1 April, your payments will stop.
Your payments will only restart when you have confirmed your details with us.
IR3 customers: extra requirements
If you have not filed your Individual income tax return ─ IR3 for 1 of the previous 2 years, we cannot estimate your entitlement for the coming year.
We’ll send you a letter asking for the information we need.
If you filed your IR3 after we sent out our letter, please let us know as we may be able to use this to estimate your income for the coming year.
If you have not filed your IR3, you may need to send us financial details, for example:
- a copy of your return or financial accounts
- a set of budgeted accounts ─ IR590
- a letter or web message from your accountant verifying your estimated business income.
When we hear back from you, we’ll send you a notice of entitlement showing your payments for the coming year.
Please respond to our letter.
If we do not get the information we need, your payments will stop and we’ll arrange to pay your Working for Families as a lump sum after the end of the tax year (31 March).
However, your weekly or fortnightly payments can restart after you confirm your details with us.
How to update your details
You can update your details by logging into myIR and selecting ‘Family and income details’ from your Working for Families account panel.
Or, you can send us a secure message by selecting ‘I want to’ and then ‘Send a message’.
Or, you can contact us in some other way.
Working for Families and Best Start - contact us
Please make sure you answer all the questions we raise in our letter.
We’re looking out for you!
During the year, we review information sent to us by employers and other payers. If it looks like your income is changing, we’ll contact you to see if we need to update your entitlement.
We will do everything we can to help you avoid an end-of-year bill.
William has 2 children, Joseph (6) and Kane (3). He qualifies for Working for Families and chooses to get his payments weekly.
Because William works for a salary, his employer sends us details of William’s income and tax deductions every month.
That means we can estimate his Working for Families entitlement for the coming year.
In March, we send William a notice of entitlement telling him how much he’s going to get from 1 April.
Shelley gets Working for Families payments every week for her daughter Regan (4). She works in the deli department of the local supermarket.
Because Shelley is an employee, we estimate her Working for Families entitlement from details her employer has sent to us over the previous year.
We send her a notice of entitlement with details of her payments for the year ahead.
Shelley checks the notice of entitlement and remembers she’ll be moving into a supervisor role in May. That will mean a pay rise, and a change in her Working for Families entitlement.
She updates her details in myIR. We recalculate her Working for Families payments and send her a new notice of entitlement showing her new payments.
Shelley did the right thing. By telling us about her change in family income, she will be less likely to face a bill at the end of the tax year.
Ethan gets Working for Families payments every week for his daughter Sydney (11). As a self-employed artist, he’s required to file an Individual income tax return ─ IR3.
However, Ethan has not filed a return for the last 2 years.
We cannot do his notice of entitlement because we do not have details of his business income.
We send out a letter asking for the information we need. Ethan does not respond to our letter and his Working for Families payments stop on 1 April.
In late April, Ethan’s tax agent sends us a web message verifying Ethan’s estimated business income for the coming year.
We send Ethan his notice of entitlement and his weekly payments start up again.