Originally my outbound flight from Australia was set 163days after the
inbound flight. Why I know this is because when I started working I
looked into the Australian tax legislation in detail in order to minimize tax burden.
Solution is pretty evident. All you need, is either to be a Kiwi (they can come over to work in AU with no trouble and loads of them do so as the pay is much higher) or be an Australian resident for taxation purposes. So I declared myself a resident. That's pretty much how it works. When you start working, you need to fill in some paperwork and part of it is where you tell your employer in which tax category you fall in. And they they withhold the tax accordingly. Tricky part is that you have no way of being certain if the tax authority will later on share your point of view about your status.
Anyhow, after some hesitation I declared myself a resident. After all I met at least most of the criteria to do so. Only couple of months later, when I took a fresh look into the legislation it dawned on me, that I am 2 days short of the minimum 165 days of stay in Australia required to be regarded as resident.
Although 2 days is pretty stupid and I thought most likely there is no real check about it anyway, I decided to be on the safe side. We are after all talking about either having to pay another 2000$ extra for tax or receiving tax return of 3000$. Changing my flight ticket was relatively cheap comparing those numbers, so there we go, I decided to stay an extra week. This worked out perfectly as it was much needed for the amazing roadtrip to come from Sydney to Cairns.
Solution is pretty evident. All you need, is either to be a Kiwi (they can come over to work in AU with no trouble and loads of them do so as the pay is much higher) or be an Australian resident for taxation purposes. So I declared myself a resident. That's pretty much how it works. When you start working, you need to fill in some paperwork and part of it is where you tell your employer in which tax category you fall in. And they they withhold the tax accordingly. Tricky part is that you have no way of being certain if the tax authority will later on share your point of view about your status.
Anyhow, after some hesitation I declared myself a resident. After all I met at least most of the criteria to do so. Only couple of months later, when I took a fresh look into the legislation it dawned on me, that I am 2 days short of the minimum 165 days of stay in Australia required to be regarded as resident.
Although 2 days is pretty stupid and I thought most likely there is no real check about it anyway, I decided to be on the safe side. We are after all talking about either having to pay another 2000$ extra for tax or receiving tax return of 3000$. Changing my flight ticket was relatively cheap comparing those numbers, so there we go, I decided to stay an extra week. This worked out perfectly as it was much needed for the amazing roadtrip to come from Sydney to Cairns.
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