Tax Refund Intercept Process (TRIP) exceptions 277-04340000

A customer may be entitled to a tax refund including:

• Individual Tax Returns
• First Home Super Saver Scheme payments
• HELP
• Business Activity Statement Returns
• Miscellaneous

Tax refunds can only be applied against debts to the Commonwealth. Cuba automatically intercepts most customers' tax refunds where there are:

• child support arrears
• consolidated revenue debt, or
• overpayments

Note: Child Support legislation allows tax refunds to be applied to estimate penalties, but Cuba does not have this functionality.

This is called the Tax Refund Intercept Process (TRIP). In some cases a TRIP can be overridden. This is known as a TRIP exception.

Return the TRIP to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) if it was intercepted in error due to:

• a mistake, or
• fraudulent activity by any person

If the TRIP has not been disbursed, the customer who owed the debt will still owe the outstanding amount. That is, the debt will be returned to their account.

If the TRIP has been disbursed, returning the refund to the ATO will result in an overpayment. This needs to be recovered. See the Payment Services transferring a payment intended for the ATO table.

Service Officer (SO2)

To intercept a customer's tax refund.

Service Officer (SO3)

To not intercept a customer's tax refund when there is no child support debt.

Service Officer (SO4)

To not apply a customer's tax refund against a debt.

Service Officer (SO6)

To decide to accept a hardship application in part or in full under hardship grounds.

Staff who require authorisation must use the TRIP - Submission and decision to intercept or release macro to refer to a Service Officer at the appropriate delegation level and route a Pending Approval intray.