Fisher1

A few comments from a fashion conscious woman in her sixties (!) the choice of clothes here in Sydney is not good, both styles and quality are a drop from the UK. I’ve been here four years (I came to join my daughter ... something that may be of interest to you in the future is the parent visa) and I haven’t worn my quilted winter jacket once. I find a decent waterproof anorak type thing is fine in Winter on cooler days here. If I were repacking my stuff now I would bring UK hand towels (Aussie hand towels are tiny) my favourite brand of underwear (M&S in my case but each to his own) loads of UK bed linen together with the beds I already owned, and a selection of warm jumpers / cardigans for Winter. I‘d also bring lots of tee shirts for Winter - in summer I find UK tee shirts too warm - and a couple of Light weight long sleeved shirts for wearing In the garden when the mozzies are about. When renting our first property we were asked for proof of income, and had no problem although we did offer six months rent up front in lieu of references. Good luck!

Everything!

Thanks

Can anyone tell me if the date you arrived in Australia just prior to being awarded PR counts as your lawful residence date even if you left the country seven weeks later and didn’t begin actually living here until the following year?

Congratulations! We went to a citizenship ceremony as guests of some friends recently - it was really quite moving. Lovely day.

The big drawback to buying in the UK is trying to get a mortgage when you are still resident overseas. As far as tax implications go, the UK and Australia have a reciprocal tax agreement that prevents double taxation - i.e. you can’t be charged tax in both countries - so you get an accountant on board who understands both tax systems. When I lived outside the UK and owned property in both countries I was charged Uk tax on the rental income for my UK property. Nothing more ... but the rules have changed since then, even though it was only ten years ago. You can’t trust the responses from HMRC - they led me astray so many times when I moved to Australia three years ago - I don’t think it was deliberate, they just didn’t know themselves.

Yes you do. If you go to the IMI website there’s a Calculator that allows you to add all the dates you have been outside Australia since your visa was validated. come to that, there’s one on this thread somewhere.

We bought in 2018 and were treated as first time buyers.

They were very good about keeping us informed. We got an email to say the old passports had arrived, then a further two emails apologizing for the delay, then one saying our application had been accepted (!) then one to say the new passports were on their way, so it wasn’t a huge long period of worry. Good luck

Not too mention escalating the cost of said passport to thousands of dollars (airfares, hotels, etc etc) If it’s any comfort, we did it recently. Sent ours off on April 6 and got the new ones back in August. Our old passports were expiring and as we aren’t able to go anywhere just now, we gritted our teeth and sent them off to the UK. It all ended well.

Yes, I think they are. If you use the calculator that some kind person added to this thread earlier, you can work it all out easily.

According to the Aus govt website, if you have spent more than a year outside Australia since your PR visa was granted, you need police clearance from every country where you have spent more than 90 days continuously since your eighteenth birthday.

Haha that reminds me of the shops in Luxembourg when we moved there in 1985. Everything closed for lunch at twelve and reopened at two. We sat outside a pavement cafe to get coffee during our first weekend there. After waiting about fifteen minutes we went to see what the hold up was ... they’d closed for lunch!

Hi BargeUK. I don’t often look on the parents’ thread any more because I got my visa in 2016 and moved here three years ago. However I saw your post and wanted to offer a bit of encouragement. I was lucky, because the wait is much longer now, but even so, I understand the sense of urgency. It’s really difficult to even get to Australia just now, so somehow you have to take a deep breath and look forward to making a visit when the Covid situation eases. Don’t forget you have a year from the issue of your visa to make your first entrance to Australia, so there is no need to rush at it. The only hurried bit is when you get an email from PVC (parents’ visa centre - be careful, I didn’t recognise PVC and almost deleted it!). Even then you get three weeks to do your medical, organise police checks and submit form eighty. If you have form eighty already completed (although that may then need updating if you have a long wait) and make sure you know exactly how to get your police clearance(s) three weeks is plenty of time. It seems like it’s never going to happen, but it will. Good luck with it all.

Brilliant! Thank you.

Hi MaroubraAndy I’ve been reading all the posts on this thread with interest and have a couple of things to say that might be helpful. First of all, the only child thing- yes, it must be tough, and my daughter will have it, but even if you’ve got siblings, the parent worry can be a nightmare. My dad died quickly at age ninety two leaving my mum alone in her late eighties - they met when she was fourteen. She was also partially sighted and very deaf when she was widowed. My sister couldn’t move back to our home town from the midlands and I was based in Brussels, teaching. Mum made such a gallant attempt at going it alone, I am so proud of what she achieved - but frailty got the better of her and she began to lose her grip a bit, despite my sister and I running back and forth to North Wales as often as we could.My husband and I made the decision to take early retirement and move back to Wales. By this time our daughter was in Sydney and we wanted to consider moving here to live, so we viewed the move to Wales with some reluctance. Surprisingly, we settled well, hooking up initially with people I still knew from secondary school and college. We had a great social life and it was a relief to be free of the endless ‘What ifs’ that plague you when you aren’t on the spot. As mum continued to deteriorate we applied for a parent’s visa to Oz ... and the visa was granted in 2016. We were desperate to take it up and join our daughter but couldn’t leave mum - believe me, we considered it a few times! The guilt is awful, whatever you do never seems to be enough. I felt like a fraud when people said I was doing a good job. If you are desperate to return to Sydney and you’re parents are still fit and well, I’d say go follow your dreams and worry about the aged care later. We finally moved over three years ago, in our mid-sixties, and neither of us are sure whether we want to end our days here, although we’ve settled and are very happy. We have both agreed that if the waiting list had been five years longer, we probably wouldn’t have made the decision to move over. I’d move back and invite the parents over for a long visit and take it from there. How do your wife’s parents feel?

Hi all I’ve just used the calculator to find out when I’ll be elligible to apply for citizenship. It seems I can apply earlier than I thought. My PR visa was granted in April 2016. My “Arrival” date was a week later, when I returned from a holiday in NewZealand. I then returned to the UK for sixteen months, making the permanent move in August 2017. I spent two months in the UK last year, otherwise have been here in Oz the whole time since August 2017. The calculator tells me I can apply in October 2020. I’m assuming this means I’ve been considered resident in Australia since April 2016, but absent for a chunk of time. Can anyone tell me if this is correct? I’d be well chuffed with the earlier date. Thanks in advance.

The whole issue of tax liabilities is quite complicated, and can be very expensive if you make the wrong move at the wrong time. I’d find a good accountant who understands both UK and Australian tax systems.

I think you’re being a bit mean calling Australia “that place”. I can fully understand why you may not have settled and how happy you must be to be home, but Australia has been a good home to many people who read these posts and it sticks a bit to hear it called “that place.”

So it would seem. However it seemed a good idea to check!

That’s what I thought, I was just checking. Given that the USA pursues people for tax even when they are living permanently elsewhere, It seemed a reasonable enough question to me. Sorry if that put you out.

Sorry I wasn’t clear. I meant to say, how long do you have an obligation to Australia if you are permenantly back in the UK.

If you return to live in the UK permenantly, how long does the tax obligation last? I’m curious.

The problem with anglophone communities of migrant brits is that they tend to be very insular. All the Brits I know who have migrated to Spain have been there more than two decades and have worked hard to learn Spanish - they have integrated well and are not restricted to a small (and ever diminishing?) group of people who will always be dependent on someone else to translate for them

No, I didn’t mean there was a four year visa. I meant that I thought your PR visa lapsed after you had been out of Australia for four years. I met someone a while ago who had worked here for many years, had three children and returned to live in the UK. All three kids subsequently returned to live in Australia, but when the parents decided to follow them, they found that their former PR status had lapsed, and they had to go through the parent visa application to get back in.