Government Child Care Benefit and Rebate Increases Why you're still not making the most of them! The government has announced that from 1 July the Child Care Benefit (CCB) rates and income thresholds will change in accordance with changes to the Consumer Price Index. The maximum amount of Child Care Tax Rebate (CCTR) will also increase. The maximum rate of CCB for one child using full-time approved child care will increase by $6.50 per week to $180, while the maximum amount of CCTR will increase from $7500 to $7778 per child, per year. Click here to read the Government fact sheet which provides all the details about the changes. The Child Care Tax Rebate will now be known as the Child Care Rebate, as the Government now recognizes that the rebate is no longer a tax offset under Taxation Legislation, but a benefit paid to families to assist with child care costs under Family Assistance Law. Are you missing out? And if so, why? In our recent Child Care and Workforce participation poll, which was taken by over one thousand CareforKids.com.au members, we discovered that there are still thousands of parents who have no idea if they're eligible or not and are potentially missing out on child care benefit and up to $7778 per child per year in child care rebate. 14 per cent of parents still didn't know if they were eligible for child care benefit or not; 43 per cent were no longer eligible for CCB from the recent income threshold changes. But the most worrying of the statistics was that 37 per cent of parents polled didn't know that they could claim tax rebate even if they weren't eligible to receive child care benefit or hadn't tried, so how many millions of dollars are parents missing out on in unclaimed benefits and (tax) rebate? "It's a puzzling statistic and you have to wonder why parents aren't making use of the rebate money that's on offer to them, said Roxanne Elliott, founder and director of CareforKids.com.au. They're missing out on a potential rebate of up to $7778 per child, per year. When we surveyed parents in our last annual child care survey, three quarters of parents making use of the child care tax rebate said that it made a significant impact on their affordability of child care". We'd like to know just how many of you are potentially missing out on the rebate, and why. Please click here to go to our mini poll… it's just a couple of questions and there are prizes to be won!

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