If paying the fee would cause or has caused financial hardship, you can ask for a 50% reduction.

If you want to ask for a reduced fee, you need to make sure you have paid the full fee or 50% of the fee by the application deadline. You then need to complete a request for fee reduction form with supporting documents and give it to us before your review is finalised.

Supporting documents

You should provide copies of documents to support your request for a fee reduction. For example:

• a current payslip or payment statements from Centrelink
• evidence of other income you receive, e.g. investment income or child support payments
• evidence of rent, board or mortgage payments and utility bills
• bank, credit card and other account statements for the previous month
• evidence that another organisation has waived, reduced or not imposed a fee (such as legal aid or pro bono (free or reduced fee) migration help).

Important: Please remove your tax file number (TFN) from any documents you provide to us.

If you do not give us enough supporting information, we may ask you for more documents to support your request. We may also make a decision on your request based on the information you have provided.

How we assess your request

We will use the information you give us to decide if we will reduce your fee.

In some cases, we may refer to other information available to us such as any statements you have made to the Australian Government about your income and financial situation.

We will consider:

• your household’s financial situation, including income, expenses, liabilities and assets
• your capacity to pay the full application fee
• whether paying the full fee would cause you, or has caused you, financial hardship
• other relevant circumstances, for example whether your application for review relates to a visa that requires you to meet costs associated with travel and stay in Australia.

We will write to you to tell you what we have decided about your request for a fee reduction.

If we do not grant your request, you must pay the full application fee. If you do not pay the fee, your application for review will not go ahead.

You cannot ask us to review your request for a fee reduction. However, we may reconsider our decision if there has been an error in the decision-making process. For example, if we did not consider relevant material that was available to us when we made the decision.
 

You may be eligible to pay a reduced fee if:

• you have been granted legal aid for your case
• you hold a Commonwealth Health Care Card, a pensioner concession card a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card or any other card that certifies that you are entitled to Commonwealth health concessions
• you are under 18
• you are imprisoned or detained
• you are receiving certain study payments from Centrelink.

If any of these circumstances apply to you, please contact us. You do not need to complete a request for a fee reduction.

Reduced fee due to financial hardship

If you are not eligible for a reduced fee based on the circumstances above, you may still be eligible to pay a reduced fee if paying the full fee would cause you, or has caused you, financial hardship.

To request a fee reduction, fill out a request for fee reduction form and attach any supporting documents. 

You can submit a request for a fee reduction:

• when you lodge your application for review
• after you have lodged your application for review, if you submit your request within the time limit for lodging your application and before the Tribunal has made a decision on your application.

If we decide to reduce your fee and you have already paid the application fee, we will refund you the appropriate amount.

Providing supporting documents

You should provide copies of documents to support your request for a fee reduction. For example:

• a current payslip or payment statements from Centrelink
• evidence of other income you receive, such as investment income or child support payments
• evidence of rent, board or mortgage payments and utility bills
• bank, credit card and other account statements for the previous month
• evidence that another organisation has waived, reduced or not imposed a fee (such as legal aid or pro bono (free or reduced fee) migration help).

Important: Please remove your tax file number (TFN) from any documents you provide to us.

If you do not give us enough supporting information, we may ask you to give us more documents to support your request. We may also make a decision on your request based on the information you have provided.

How we assess your request

We will use the information you provide to decide if we will reduce your fee.

In some cases, we may refer to other information available to us such as any statements you have made to the Australian Government about your income and financial situation.

We will consider:

• your household’s financial situation, including income, expenses, liabilities and assets
• your capacity to pay the prescribed application fee
• whether paying the full fee would cause you, or has caused you, financial hardship
• other relevant circumstances.

We will write to you to tell you what we have decided about your request for a fee reduction.

If we do not grant your request, you must pay the full application fee. If you do not pay the fee, your application for review will not go ahead.

You can ask us to review our decision not to grant a fee reduction on financial hardship grounds. You must make this request by writing to us within 28 days of receiving the original decision about your fee reduction. 

In certain circumstances, if you make more than one application and we decide that they can be dealt with together, we can order that you only need to pay one fee. You can ask us about paying a single fee when you lodge the applications.

For reviews of migration and protection decisions made under Part 5 of the Migration Act, our decision about whether you can pay a single fee for multiple reviews is final. You cannot ask us to review this decision.

For other reviews, you can ask us to review our decision not to charge you a single fee for multiple reviews. You must make this request by writing to us within 28 days of receiving the original decision that you need to pay more than one fee.  
 

If we decide that the application is invalid, we will refund the review fee you paid.

We will refund 50% of the full review fee if you paid the full fee and we decide you can pay the reduced fee.

We will refund 50% of the fee you paid (full fee or reduced fee) If the decision is set aside or varied or the application is remitted to the Department of Home Affairs.

If you withdraw the application for review, we can only refund the fee in very limited circumstances. These are set out in the information about withdrawing an application for review [PDF, <1 MB].

If you are entitled to get a refund of all or part of the review fee, we will give you a form to provide bank account details to receive the refund electronically.

We can pay your refund to another person if you prefer. To do this, you need to give us a signed request and the other person's bank details.

We will refund:

• the full application fee if you were not required to pay it.
• the difference between the fee you paid and $100, if we agreed that you could pay a reduced fee due to financial hardship
• the difference between the fee you paid and $100 if the review is decided in your favour.

There is no refund if you paid a reduced fee of $100.