LittleMissWildChild

Hi there I'm wondering here if anyone here can help. My husband and I live in Australia but he has a flat in London. We want to sell the UK flat and buy something here instead. We currently own (well, the bank does) a house in Australia. Anyway my husband is a permanent resident for Australia, and is a Non-Resident Landlord for tax purposes in the UK. He always does a UK tax return as well as an Australian one. When we sell the flat does he need to pay capital gains in the UK bearing in mind that he will be paying capital gains in Australia as well? And how does he opt out of doing a tax return in future once it is sold and we have no ties to the UK, as after we sell it that will be our final tax return - we don't want to get fines for not submitting a tax return in future when we don't actually need to. We have tried contacting HMRC but not had any luck, they don't seem to understand what we're asking. We're happy to pay whatever tax we need to pay, we just don't want to have to pay it twice.

Sorry if this has been asked before. Hubby has a UK flat, we are living in Oz so he has a tenant. We're thinking of selling it and buying something here. We have been in Oz for just under 2 years. I'm an Aussie citizen, he has PR. 1. He is currently doing UK tax returns for his UK income from his flat (and then mentions it on his OZ tax return). If he sells does he need to pay tax on selling the flat in the UK and then in Oz? Or can he just cut the UK out and declare everything in the UK as he is now PR here? 2. This will sound really stupid but we've never sold a property - how does capital gains work? We have only had a tenant in there from maybe 5 months before we came here. The flat was worth £145K when we left - we got a quote from his letting agent at the time - its now worth £175K now. His mortgage is still £105K. To my understanding he only pays capital gains on the difference between what it was when he left and what it is now, is that right? I read on the NAB website (albeit from 2011) that: 'If you’ve acquired a capital gains tax (CGT) asset after 21 September 1999 and held it for over 12 months before selling it, you should be able to obtain a 50% discount on the capital gain. If you sell an asset less than 12 months after buying it you don’t get the 50% discount and should pay tax on the full capital gain.'. Does that therefore mean if the property sells for £175K (and i understand there are fees etc) and his flat was worth £145K so the diff is £30K if the property was subject to capital gains, it would only be for £15k? And can we split that between us? Our incomes are similar. Sorry for all the stupid questions TIA x

Hubby is doing his tax return for his UK rental property (we live in Oz) and is stuck on a question. 'Tax taken off total rents and other income from property: (Please read the notes.) The notes say: 'This field should only be completed if you are a non-resident landlord. Enter the total tax taken off the amount reported in 'Total rents and other income from property including any furnished holiday lettings profits'. I have googled it but am stuck as to what we need to put in this box. Help anyone? I appreciate any help

My husband is on a 309 visa. Since arriving a year ago, he has applied for 3 jobs and got all 3 jobs (only took 1 though). His visa status hasn't been a problem. He just says his wife is Aussie and we're staying here for good, none of his employers have even questioned whether his visa is temporary or not.

For us what we like the most is: Cheaper housing (London compared to Adelaide) - we can actually afford to buy a 4 bed house here (we earn only $100K a year between us) which is 100m from the beach, in London we probably wouldn't have even been able to save enough for the deposit to get a 2 bed. Better quality of life for our toddler - yes there were museums, but only 1 park nearby, our flat in London didn't even have a balcony. Here we walk the dog on the beach, lots of childrens parks nearby to play in, we can go kayaking, fishing, walking in the hills, go to wildlife parks etc...this wouldn't have been as easily accessible for us in London. Fortnightly pay is amazing. Getting money for your cans and bottles in SA We have never had to pay for anything for the doctors (our doctor bulk bills everyone) Cheaper public transport (compared to London) A proper summer (41c) today - we don't have to take wellies when we go to festivals! Getting paid overtime and having a 38 hour working week - I know this is just personal experience but most of my jobs in the UK had a 45 - 48 working week for average pay and no overtime, and some had up to 70 hours with the same. There are lots of things the UK is better for though, and we loved London. Ultimately Adelaide is better for us as our little boy will have a better life here as we can afford a house with a garden.

I'm not saying people who have jobs which require no training etc should be on $30/$40/$50 an hour. I'm saying that $16 is a pretty rubbish wage as it is if you are trying to support a family, and for someone who is on a decent salary to begrudge our lowest paid workers a couple of dollars an hour, is just greedy. Plus my husband was until recently in a job which was only paying just over the minimum wage - and he has qualifications on both refrigeration and electrical, plus also around 20 years work experience, in the industry he was employed in, but that is all he could get at the time. Some employers are just greedy and will try to pay their staff as little as possible. Say we cut the minimum wage to $13 an hour. Do you really think all these employers will hire more staff? Ha! The directors and owners and shareholders will just make more profits, as they know the work can get done with the amount of employees they have already, so why hire more?

I think everyone who thinks the minimum wage is too high should first offer to take a proper cut in their own salaries. I bet most of them wouldn't want to take a chunk off their $80k/$100k/$200k salaries to increase employment etc... It's alright to suggest the poorest workers have their wage cut, but I bet it's not alright to have their own, even though many of these workers work just as hard, for long hours and do the jobs a lot of others won't do. It's just greed.

Ours was delivered to Adelaide and it took 15 weeks!

These are our stats. 309 applied for July 3rd 2012, payment taken, CO assigned, medicals requested. July 26th Medicals sent. Jan 2nd 2013 Visa approved. Easy peasy, and 1 day short of 6 months, which is what we were advised.