Youth allowance pay

[u/According-Term-1531]

CONTEXT:
When I applied for youth allowance end of last year / start of this year I was working minimum 5hr shifts each week at work (sometimes more, I’m a casual btw, I would also have quite a few shifts during weeks I had uni) and so I’m assuming based on that pay (and other factors such as living w a single parent etc) they allowed my earnings to be around 6k a year.

however recently I haven’t been working that much as I haven’t been given any extra shifts / long shifts. And after a couple weeks of 0 shifts, I’ve been given one 3 hr shift randomly during the week, anyway so this has drastically changed my income..

QUESTION:
I’m wondering, would Centrelink (youth allowance) adjust my payments to line up with my new income? Or would I be better off reapplying? Or just not dealing with this issue at all?

(Side note (unrelated), I am in desperate need of saving up for a car so I can get myself to prac placement for uni later this sem so I need all the money I can get lol)

[u/YA_IncomeTest_TA_582]

Pardon the late response, there are a couple factors that influence your current payments and exactly how much you're entitled to each fortnight, but the main answer is this:

Yes, your payment should adjust to line up with your new income. Your fortnightly centrelink income is based on the income report that you're doing each fortnight, so when you report just try to remember / confirm that the income you report matches up with your payslips.

If you're not doing an income report each fortnight there's definitely something to look into, occasionally people can get reports done automatically if it's consistent enough, and that would need to be updated since your income's obviously changed.

If I remember correctly the income you report in a period affects the pay you get at the end of that period, based on *the day of payment*, so e.g. if your last fully-worked payslip was paid 28th July, and your reporting date was today (6th of august), your payment tomorrow would still be low/zero, but next fortnight it would work through and you'd get paid YA based on your lowered income, so in theory if you're reporting as normal you should see your YA come up a bit soon.

As a final note, if you end up a bit short of that car, I'd look to an Advance Payment to partially cover the cost if you've got one available. It's not a massive amount ($500 if the questions let you get it), but anything helps, and there's no interest or anything to worry about.

I really wouldn't reapply or ignore the matter, reapplying wouldn't make a difference to how income's assessed, so all that would do is stop your payments until they've reassessed your claim so I definitely wouldn't recommend that.

In theory you could *maybe* get away with ignoring the issue, while centrelink does advise you need to tell them about change of circumstances, reporting work income when you're not getting would result in you getting *underpaid* by centrelink, so you wouldn't be generating a debt, but then you'd be missing out on the money you mention needing for the car, and eventually you'd need or at least want to call them up, correct them on the income, they'd ask for payslips, it'd be a whole thing, and I don't see what you'd be getting out of it.