Family Tax Benefit A

[Philip]

Has anyone here claimed this?

I think we are eligible from the date of arrival in Aus as my child and I are citizens (wife is PR).

My main question is: if I claim now for fortnightly payments, do I just lose the payments for the past 10 weeks, or do I get them later on when they do the balancing?

If the former, then it would make more sense to claim a lump sum at the end of this tax year and then maybe fortnightly from July.

 

BTW, is it really that rare for citizens to leave Aus as children and return to live for the first time as adults?? Things like mygov, centrelink ATO etc keep getting errors because I don't fit the box of new immigrant or a resident who has grown up being in the system. Today I spent 3 hours on the phone to centrelink until they realised someone entered one letter of my name incorrectly in 1990, but my parents never even claimed any benefits. Also discovered medicare has been sending a new card to my childhood home every 5 years for the past 25 years - and I learned that UK residents are actually meant to get a medicare card with a different colour, though I never needed the reciprocal healthcare when I visited.

[Ken]

On 12/01/2024 at 19:47, Philip said:

Has anyone here claimed this?

I think we are eligible from the date of arrival in Aus as my child and I are citizens (wife is PR).

My main question is: if I claim now for fortnightly payments, do I just lose the payments for the past 10 weeks, or do I get them later on when they do the balancing?

If the former, then it would make more sense to claim a lump sum at the end of this tax year and then maybe fortnightly from July.

 

BTW, is it really that rare for citizens to leave Aus as children and return to live for the first time as adults?? Things like mygov, centrelink ATO etc keep getting errors because I don't fit the box of new immigrant or a resident who has grown up being in the system. Today I spent 3 hours on the phone to centrelink until they realised someone entered one letter of my name incorrectly in 1990, but my parents never even claimed any benefits. Also discovered medicare has been sending a new card to my childhood home every 5 years for the past 25 years - and I learned that UK residents are actually meant to get a medicare card with a different colour, though I never needed the reciprocal healthcare when I visited.

I think you've lost the period that you didn't claim for. Once they start paying it, they will back date it to the date you applied for it, but no further. If you elect for the lump sum at the end of the tax year it still won't go back before you lodged the claim. You need to lodge the claim asap.

I've only known the different coloured Medicare cards to be issued to temporary residents. The Green cards are for citizens and permanent residents. Perhaps a citizen should get a different colour card if they are non-resident and only visiting Australia, but I've never heard of it happening. Certainly, as soon as you started living here again the green Medicare card is the correct one. These days if you leave Australia, Centrelink know about it, so I doubt they would make the mistake of keep sending out cards, but in 1990 not everything was on the system.

 

[Philip]

1 hour ago, Ken said:

I think you've lost the period that you didn't claim for. Once they start paying it, they will back date it to the date you applied for it, but no further. If you elect for the lump sum at the end of the tax year it still won't go back before you lodged the claim. You need to lodge the claim asap.

I've only known the different coloured Medicare cards to be issued to temporary residents. The Green cards are for citizens and permanent residents. Perhaps a citizen should get a different colour card if they are non-resident and only visiting Australia, but I've never heard of it happening. Certainly, as soon as you started living here again the green Medicare card is the correct one. These days if you leave Australia, Centrelink know about it, so I doubt they would make the mistake of keep sending out cards, but in 1990 not everything was on the system.

 

Thanks for your reply. Centrelink said I could lodge a claim in July 2024 once I know our actual income for the current tax year - that would indicate nothing gets "lost" with a lump sum. They couldn't give a clear answer on the fortnightly claim.

 

When we were leaving Australia in 1995 my dad would have gone to a medicare office to tell them (we moved to a country without reciprocal health care) but the form he filled in probably got lost, or there was no form and they just didn't act on it so never cancelled our medicare. Anyway I got it all sorted now.

They said I should have applied for a yellow medicare card after moving to the UK https://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+medicare+card&tbm=isch but given that you can no longer do it at an office and the email system takes 5 months (as I posted on the other thread) I'm not sure how that is meant to work for a UK resident staying in 2-3 hotels over the course of 1-2 weeks and then going home...

Edited January 18 by Philip