Definitions – Medicare levy surcharge

Appropriate level of private patient hospital cover

An appropriate level of private patient hospital cover is cover provided by a registered health insurer for hospital treatment in Australia which has an excess of:

• $500 or less (for a policy covering only one person), or
• $1,000 or less (for all other policies).

Excess is the amount you pay before your health insurer pays for any claim you make.

General cover (formerly called ancillary cover) or 'extras' is not private patient hospital cover because it covers only items such as optical, dental, physiotherapy or chiropractic treatment.

If you have health cover but are not sure whether it is at the appropriate level, you registered health insurer can tell you.

Child

Child includes:

• your adopted child, stepchild or ex-nuptial child
• a child of your spouse, and
• someone who is your child within the meaning of the Family Law Act 1975 (for example, a child who is considered to be a child of a person under a state or territory court order giving effect to a surrogacy agreement).

Dependants

For Medicare levy surcharge purposes, your dependants (regardless of their income) are your:

• spouse, even if they worked during 2017–18 or had their own income
• children under 21 years old
• children 21 to 24 years old who are studying full time at school, college or university.

Dependants must have been Australian residents in 2017–18 and you must have contributed to their maintenance.

Your spouse includes another person (of any sex) who:

• you were in a relationship with that was registered under a prescribed state or territory law
• although not legally married to you, lived with you on a genuine domestic basis in a relationship as a couple.

The definition of child includes children of people who are in same-sex relationships.

Maintaining a dependant

You maintained a dependant if any of the following applied:

• you both lived in the same house
• you gave them food, clothing and lodging
• you helped them to pay for their living, medical and educational costs.

If you had a spouse for the whole of 2017–18 and your spouse worked at any time during the year, we still consider you to have maintained your spouse as a dependant for the whole income year.

We consider you to have maintained a dependant even if the two of you were temporarily separated, for example, due to holidays or overseas travel.

If you maintained a dependant for only part of the year, you may need to adjust your claim accordingly.

Superannuation lump sums and income for MLS

Your income and your combined income for MLS purposes exclude the taxed element of a superannuation lump sum, other than a death benefit, that you received when you were aged between your preservation age and 59 years old that does not exceed your low-rate cap amount for 2017–18. For 2017–18 the low-rate cap amount is $200,000, but it could be less for you if you had received certain superannuation lump sums in previous years. For more information, see table 3 below and the definition of low-rate cap.

Table 3: Death benefit

Death benefit paid to death benefits dependant (of any age)

Element	Amount	Tax rate
Tax free component	Whole	Tax free
Taxed element	Whole	Tax free
Untaxed element	Whole	Tax free

Death benefit paid to non-death benefits dependant (of any age)

Element	Amount	Tax rate
Tax free component	Whole	Tax free
Taxed element	Whole	15%
Untaxed element	Whole	30%