457 Benchmark training

The Employer Nomination visa (subclasses 121 and 856) closed to new applications on 1 July 2012. You can add your partner or a dependent child to your application if it has not yet been decided. The Employer Nomination Scheme (ENS) allowed Australian employers to sponsor employees who are foreign nationals for a permanent visa to work in Australia. The Employer Nomination visa (subclasses 121 and 856) visa is for applicants who were in Australia and lodged a visa application on or before 30 June 2012.

If the company has no employees who are Australian Citizens or permanent residents they will have to apply benchmark A and pay 2% of the gross payroll into an Industry training fund. For example TAFE.

The training benchmarks are the same for both 457 & 186 visa's. The training must be formal and structured and broadly relevant to the roles of the participants. 40% of the cost can be applied to Directors who are Australian citizens or permanent residents and 60% to staff who have citizenship & pr. The benchmark is 1% of the gross payroll of the sponsoring entity in the 12 months prior to lodging the sponsorship application. It takes less than 1 hour to obtain Benchmark B documents.