Cancellation at customer's request of JobSeeker Payment (JSP) or Youth Allowance (YA) (job seeker) 102-10020190

A customer can choose to cancel their income support payment voluntarily.

Reasons may include:

• Customer and or partner returns to work
• Customer has a change in their relationship status resulting in them no longer requiring an income support payment (ISP)
• Customer temporarily/permanently moves overseas (investigate portability of ISP)
• Customer comes into money for example: Inheritance/lottery winnings, see Assessment of income for Centrelink payments

A customer may surrender or cancel their income support payment without providing an explanation

When a customer voluntarily cancels their payment, impacts include:

• Loss of Working Credit balance
• Full-time ongoing, part-time/casual employees can work for 12 fortnights prior to cancellation of their payment when income exceeds the allowable threshold
• Loss of Rent Assistance and/or other supplementary payments
• Customer may not be able to use their Concession Card, see Changes in customer’s circumstances and effect on concession card entitlement
• Rate of Family Tax Benefit
• Child Care Subsidy, see Eligibility for Child Care Subsidy (CCS)

If a job seeker has started work (full time ongoing, full time, part-time, casual), check to see if the customer may be entitled to keep some of their income support payment while they are working:

• working credits may enable the customer to keep some of their income support payment while they are working
• the job seeker can continue to lodge a Reporting Statement via self-managed service channels (Online account, Express Plus application or phone), in person or in writing (SU19) to take advantage of the employment income nil rate period

When the job seeker makes the request to cancel in person or by phone, without reporting, the Service Officer should advise the job seeker that it is in their interest to lodge a final Reporting Statement via self-managed service channels (Online account, Express Plus application or phone), in person or in writing (SU19). If they do not lodge:

• the job seeker will not be paid any entitlement they may have accrued, or
• job seekers on variable reporting may incur a debt if they have received payment since their last report

If the customer advises they have become a full-time Australian Apprentice, investigate entitlement to ABSTUDY, Austudy or YA.

Changes to a dependent YA customer's circumstances may affect the family pool if those siblings receive dependent ABSTUDY, Assistance for Isolated Children (AIC) or YA.

Eligible customers may use the Cancel my current payment service in their Centrelink online account to voluntarily cancel their own income support payment see Cancel my current payment online.

When a participation payment is cancelled or suspended, background processing automatically:

• finalises any outstanding compliance action that is no longer required
• holds compliance action that will need to be considered if payment restarts within 3 months

For more information, see Rejecting a compliance action.

If a JSP or YA (job seeker) payment is REJ or CAN/CLR, even where the customer has cancelled their payment themselves, they have the same appeal and review rights regardless of the reason for the cancellation.