Examples of how we treat your child support as income

Inland Revenue shares most types of child support payment information with us. Our systems automatically treat these payments as income when working out your benefit and most other payments you get from us. This page has examples of how this will work.

How we treat your child support as income

IR shares monthly child support information with us around the 21st of every month, if the paying parent pays on time. If the paying parent pays late, IR shares it with us on the day they pay it.

When we get your child support payment information from IR, we treat this as your income for the next month. This means the next 4 or 5 weeks from the date you receive the child support payment. It could be 4 weeks, or 5 weeks, it depends on the number of weeks until you get your next child support payment from IR (as long as the paying parent has paid on time).

We take the total amount of child support that IR has told us about and average it out over these 4 or 5 weeks so it’s a weekly amount.

How much child support we treat as income

You're entitled to a certain amount of child support each month. IR call this your 'child support entitlement' and it's the amount the paying parent should be paying to IR.

If the paying parent pays less than the full amount for the month, IR will give you whatever amount they have paid. This is the amount they share this with us and we treat as income.

When the paying parent pays the rest of what's owed, IR will pay it to you straight away and then share it with us. This is treated as income once IR have paid it to you.

If you get paid weekly

Weekly pay cycles are from Monday to Sunday. 

If you get paid weekly, the next month is the next 4 weeks, or 5 weeks, from the Monday of the week you receive the child support payment.

We'll take it that you have received the child support payment the day after IR pay you. This is to allow for banking time.

Example for the month of August (4 weeks)

  • Paying parent must pay $800 child support to IR on Monday 21 August (for period 1 July to 31 July).
  • Paying parent only pays $600 child support to IR on Monday 21 August (for period 1 July to 31 July).
  • IR pays you (the receiving parent) $600 on Tuesday 22 August.
  • IR shares this info with us ($600) on Tuesday 22 August.
  • We’ll take it that you have received the payment on Wednesday 23 August, to allow for banking time.

We’ll then average out this $600 of child support as weekly income of $150 a week from Monday 21 August to Sunday 17 September.

Your first payment from us with this child support counted as income will be in the week of Monday 28 August (as we pay for the week that’s just been).

When paying parent pays remaining $200

Once the paying parent pays the remaining $200, IR will pay this to you straight away. They will then share this information with us.

We'll then average out this $200 child support as weekly income over the next 4 or 5 weeks.

Example for the month of September (5 weeks)

  • Paying parent must pay $800 child support to IR on Wednesday 20 September (for period 1 August to 31 August).
  • Paying parent pays $800 child support to IR on Wednesday 20 September (for period 1 August to 31 August).
  • IR pays you (the receiving parent) $800 on Thursday 21 September.
  • IR shares this info with us ($800) on Thursday 21 September.
  • We’ll take it that you have received the payment on Friday 22 September, to allow for banking time.

We’ll then average out this $800 of child support as weekly income of $160 a week from Monday 18 September to Sunday 22 October.

Your next payment from us with this child support counted as income will be in the week of Monday 25 September (as we pay for the week that’s just been).

If you get paid fortnightly

Fortnightly pay cycles are from Wednesday to Tuesday across 2 weeks.

If you get paid fortnightly, the next month is the next 4 weeks from either:

  • the Wednesday of the week you receive the child support payment, if you get the child support in the first week of your pay cycle, or
  • the Wednesday of the week after you receive the child support payment, if you get the child support in the second week of your pay cycle.

We'll take it that you have received the child support payment the day after IR pay you. This is to allow for banking time.

Example for the month of August

  • Paying parent must pay $750 child support to IR on Monday 21 August (for period 1 July to 31 July).
  • Paying parent pays $750 child support to IR on Monday 21 August (for period 1 July to 31 July).
  • IR pays you (the receiving parent) $750 on Tuesday 22 August.
  • IR shares this info with us ($750) on Tuesday 22 August.
  • We'll take it that you have received the payment on Wednesday 23 August, to allow for banking time.

Your pay cycle is from Wednesday 16 August to Tuesday 29 August. You've received the child support payment in the second week of your pay cycle. So we’ll average out this $750 child support as weekly income from Wednesday 30 August to Tuesday 26 September.

Your first payment from us with this child support counted as income will be from Wednesday 13 September (as we pay for the fortnight that’s just been).