Child Care Benefit (CCB) overpayments arising from reconciliation and lump sum claims 107-04100020

Customers who received CCB as child care fee reduction, or zero rate are subject to reconciliation. Customers can claim CCB as a lump sum at the end of the financial year.

At reconciliation, the customer's CCB entitlement for a relevant financial year is worked out. It compares the fee reduction the customer received based on their estimated income with their entitlement based on actual income and child care usage.

Calculation of Child Care Rebate (CCR) entitlement occurs during:

• CCB reconciliation, or
• lump sum claim assessment from 2006-07 onwards

Updating CCB and CCR information will prompt the system to recalculate the entitlements. This can result in a:

• top-up
• negative adjustment (debt), or
• nil adjustment

For any overpayment, the system will raise the debt in the Debt Management and Information System (DMIS). The system will include any reconciliation and lump sum debts in the same financial year. The customer will receive a letter with the debt details.

For further information, see Debt offsetting during family assistance reassessment, reconciliation and processing.

There are differences between Family Tax Benefit (FTB) and CCB reconciliation/lump sum claim debts:

• raising of CCB, CCR and FTB debts occurs separately
• CCB and CCR debts are recoverable from tax refunds if raised on or after 1 July 2006
• recovery of CCB and CCR debts from ongoing fee reductions does not occur (FTB debts can be recovered from ongoing FTB payments)
• if CCB reconciliation cannot occur due to non-lodgement, the system will raise the CCB payments as a debt. The system will reassess this if customer or partner lodges their income details any time afterwards
• the agency can use Child Care Subsidy withholding to repay CCB/CCR debts. This is not applicable for FTB debts