In February or March, you’ll receive a notice of entitlement or a letter asking you for more information.
Your payments for the next tax year (from 1 April) will be based on estimates of your family income and situation from the current tax year. If we ask you for more information and we do not get it by 1 April, your Working for Families payments will stop.
Notice of entitlement ─ confirming what you’ll get in the year ahead
If we have enough information about your family income and situation, we’ll estimate your Working for Families payments automatically and send you a notice of entitlement in myIR or by post.
Your notice of entitlement will show 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.
If the information in your notice of entitlement 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 information on your notice of entitlement is wrong, please update your details or send us a message in myIR as soon as possible.
Letter ─ more information needed
If we don’t have your up-to-date income and family details, we’ll send you a letter asking for more information. Once you’ve provided the additional information, we’ll send you a notice of entitlement confirming your payments for the coming year.
If you do not provide the information we need before 1 April, your payments will stop. We’ll arrange to pay your Working for Families as a lump sum after the end of the tax year (31 March). If you later confirm the additional information, you’ll be able to change your payments back to weekly or fortnightly.
IR3 customers: extra requirements
If you file an Individual income tax return – IR3, we’ll estimate your entitlement using information from either of your previous 2 years’ tax returns. If you have not filed your IR3 for 1 of the previous 2 years, we cannot estimate your entitlement for the coming year. If this is the case, you’ll receive a letter asking for the information we need.
You’ll need to file your IR3, or 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.
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’. You’ll need to include any information requested in your letter.
Changes to your family situation, income and working hours
We’re looking out for you during the year
We review information sent to us by employers and other payers during the year. If it looks like your income is changing, we’ll contact you to see if we need to update your entitlement.
We’ll do everything we can to help you avoid an overpayment and 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.