Updating Income Stream Information
Hi everyone, I wanted to chat about income stream reviews and how they may affect your Age Pension and eligibility for concession cards.
An income stream is a series of regular payments from accumulated superannuation contributions. This is retirement income you receive from an organisation or superannuation fund.
Services Australia assesses income from income streams for the purposes of Centrelink payments and concession cards. Each year we do income stream reviews to make sure our information remains current.
To do this, we collect details about the income stream products you and your partner have.
The process is easy, and you don’t need to do anything. We’ll contact your provider for your income stream information twice a year – in February and again in August. The information from your provider is then added to your Services Australia customer record, which automatically completes the review of your income stream.
In some cases, we may send a letter directly to you to ask for the information we need. We would only do this if your provider didn’t provide us with the information, or if you have an income stream product type that is not subject to an automated review.
Some people may have more than one income stream. In these cases, the same process is applied to all income stream products.
Getting the most accurate information from your income stream provider allows us to pay you the right amount of pension for your situation, and confirm your eligibility for concession cards. However, it’s important to know these reviews could also mean a change in your rate of payment. If the information affects your pension payment or concession card, we’ll send you a message through either your myGov account inbox, or mail you a letter.
We will send letters out in August to review income streams from self-managed superannuation funds.
You can also update your income stream balances yourself at any time through your myGov account.
You can get more information by heading to servicesaustralia.gov.au/incomestreamreviews
servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/topics/income-streams
Until next time,
Hank Jongen
General Manager
Services Australia
Have you got a question for Hank? Email [email protected] and he’ll try and answer your questions in next month’s column.
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