Waiving the notice period when charging child support payments as income

Overview

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and Inland Revenue (IR) are seeking feedback on plans to amend their Approved Information Sharing Agreement (AISA) as part of the Child Support Pass-on initiative announced in Budget 2022.

From 1 July 2023, Child Support payments will be passed on directly to sole parents on a benefit and treated as income. To make it easier, most clients will not have to tell MSD about their Child Support payments. IR will share details of their Child Support payments with MSD, who will treat these payments as income.

To do this effectively, IR and MSD want to amend their AISA that allows IR to share Child Support payment information with MSD. The change involves removing the requirement for MSD to give people 10 working days to respond before changing someone’s benefit based on their Child Support payment. The notice period would delay when we can charge Child Support as income and change a person’s payments. This means they could be overpaid and incur unnecessary debt.

Link to guidance document - English
Link to guidance document - Te Reo
Link to Sign Language version of the guidance document
Accessible formats of the guidance document will be available soon

Link to the Privacy Impact Assessment

Please note the Privacy Impact Assessment was an initial assessment to inform engagement with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. This version of the Privacy Impact Assessment should be considered a draft. The Privacy Impact Assessment will be updated following public consultation and on-going engagement with the  Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The updated version will be available on MSD’s website late 2022.  

Public consultation is open from 20 July until August 17 and you can give us your views by completing this online survey, or by providing a submission.

Submissions can be made by emailing AISAAmendment_consultations@msd.govt.nz 

Or send your response to:

AISA Amendment
Ministry of Social Development
P O Box 1556
Wellington 6140
New Zealand   

Submissions may be the subject of a request under the Official Information Act 1982, which will result in their publication unless there are grounds for the submission (in whole or part) to be withheld. The withholding of responses on the grounds of privacy, or for any other reason, will be determined in accordance with that Act. If you consider that any part of your submission should properly be withheld under the Act, please clearly indicate this.

Submissions will be shared with the Minister for Social Development and Employment, and Minister of Revenue where MSD and IR believe it is appropriate, to inform the AISA amendment.  Any information shared with those Ministers or agencies will be transferred to them securely.