Consultation: Changes when declaring child support as income
20 July 2022.
The Ministry of Social Development and Inland Revenue are holding public consultation on plans to amend their Approval Information Sharing Agreement. This is part of Child Support Pass-on announced in Budget 2022.
Background
From 1 July 2023, Child Support payments will be passed on to sole parents on a benefit. These payments will be treated as income for benefit purposes.
To make it easier, most clients will not have to tell us about these payments. Inland Revenue (IR) will share details of their Child Support payments with us and we'll charge these payments as income.
To do this effectively, we want to amend our Approval Information Sharing Agreement (AISA). This agreement allows IR to share Child Support payment information with us.
What's changing
The change involves removing the requirement for us to give clients 10 working days to respond before we reduce or suspend a client’s benefit based on their Child Support payment.
Keeping the notice period would delay when we can charge Child Support as income and change someone’s payments. This means they could be overpaid and incur unnecessary debt.
Removing it would help us ensure people are paid the right amount at the right time.
The change only applies to IR-administered Child Support payments.
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and IR plan to implement safeguards to accompany the change. These are outlined in the guidance document on the MSD website.
Have your say
Public consultation is open from 20 July until 17 August. You can read about the consultation on the MSD website.
You can give us your views by either:
- emailing AISAAmendment_consultations@msd.govt.nz with ‘Submission on proposed AISA amendment’ in the subject line, or
- posting to: AISA Amendment, Ministry of Social Development, PO Box 1556, Wellington 6140, New Zealand.
