House of Representatives

Further Supplementary Explanatory Memorandum

(Circulated by authority of the Minister for Community Services, the Hon Larry Anthony MP)

Outline and financial impact statement

These amendments provide for two new measures relating to family tax benefit (FTB) and change the commencement provisions for some of the measures in the Bill, in light of the delayed passage of the Bill.

Waiver of FTB eligibility

The first new measure builds on the existing rule in the FTB provisions that prevents a child from being an FTB child of an individual who has less than 10% care of the child. The new measure will retain the 10% care threshold, but will provide further rules to allow a non-resident parent, who may be entitled to receive part of an FTB entitlement on the basis of care for the child of between 10% and 30%, to waive his or her eligibility for FTB for a period. This will allow the resident parent to receive the full amount of FTB for the child for the period.

Recovery from FTB of amounts of a persons child support debt

The second new measure relates to a person who has failed to pay, by the due date, a child support debt of the person in respect of one or more children, and who is also entitled to be paid FTB, by instalment or for a past period, for those children. In that case, the Child Support Registrar will have the discretion to require that that FTB be paid to the Registrar by the Secretary (to the Department of Family and Community Services) in whole or partial satisfaction of the child support debt.

Changed commencement dates

The measures in the Bill for which the commencement dates will change (due to the delayed passage of the Bill) are:

•

lower child support percentages for children with whom liable parent has 10% to 30% contact (Schedule 1) - now to commence on 1 July 2002 (formerly 1 July 2001);

•

lower cap on income subject to child support formula assessment (Schedule 2) - now to commence on 1 January 2002 (formerly 1 January 2001); and

•

income earned for the benefit of resident children (Schedule 3) - now to commence on Royal Assent (formerly 1 January 2001).

The commencement dates for all other measures in the Bill are not to change. The changed dates mean that the costing for the package of measures in the Bill has changed.