Ausvisitor

51 minutes ago, Marisawright said:

....however the whole amount (18,000 GBP) will have to be declared as income in Australia.  It's treated as if you suddenly earned an extra 18,000 GBP on your salary that particular year.  It just gets added on, so you'll pay a high tax rate on the whole amount.

Yes, whilst you would save some UK tax, when you then declare it in AUS, you are taxed as having received the whole 18k, you then offset the tax you paid in the UK (on the 14k) and pay the difference to the AUS taxman.

So assuming a similar tax rate between the two countries (which isn't exactly the case but it's not massively different) you would end up paying tax in the whole 18k, 75% of the tax amount to the UK, and the other 25% to the AUS tax service 

Can totally agree with the above poster, northern Marrickville is really nice, a little noisy due to the planes, but that's a problem in most if the Sydney area

3 hours ago, Jibba said:

Thanks for the reply. Does the emergency passport extend beyond 21 days? And can I use an emergency document for a route which is already booked? I have the main return flight from Melbourne to London and seperate flights between London - Finland and then Finland - Spain one way then one way back from Spain to England.

I’m thinking if I can get my Mum to attend an appointment in the London embassy to get a new passport for me before I arrive then I won’t need to worry about onward trips within Europe.

The big problem is trying to actually book a passport renewal appt at the embassy in London. Currently there are no available appointments and not even a calendar showing - just an automated response saying there’s nothing available!

Does anyone know how I can actually speak with someone from the embassy in Melbourne? I tried calling with no joy and emailed - australia.enquiries@fcdo.gov.uk though I’m not sure they’re the right department.

Thanks.

 

Your mum can't attend the appointment for you, it has to be the applicant 

6 hours ago, Onward said:

I’m moving to work in Geelong on a 482 visa in July.

We’ve sold our house in Canada and there are a few logistical challenges I had not anticipated.

First, we’re looking to rent and it seems that it’s very difficult to rent a house until we actually arrive for a variety of reasons. Even then, the rental process seems reasonably complicated compared to Canada.

Without being able to secure a long term rental, we have no physical address to ship our stuff too. We’ve sold or given away all of our furniture, but we still have some personal items to ship from Canada.

It seems that it’s not possible rent a storage unit remotely?

Also, I’m not accustomed as a professional to not even getting a response when sending property rental inquiries from realtors. Is there something I’m missing here?

We’d be fine with renting a house a month before we arrive, but that would create insurance issues as here in Canada, you have to have your property checked every 72hrs when you’re away.

Also, we can’t even seem to get a post office box prior to arrival as it seems you have to present in person and show id. This leaves us without an address to forward our mail.

Our current plan is to rent an Airbnb house for a month or two, but that still leaves us without a shipping address prior to leaving.

 

Any help with navigating these challenges would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

I'm interested to find out what you are going to be doing in Geelong. I go there a bit to visit clients, Geelong seems to have two industries.

Vineyards and Gov departments displaced from Melbourne to share employment out into the shires.

Its a lovely place, second biggest town in Victoria (but 18 times smaller than Melbourne), only an hour on the train to the big city though, and just 1.5 hours on a plane to a proper world class city in Sydney from Avalon airport.

I really liked Geelong, but it's too small for us, we are London/Toronto/Sydney CBD dwellers

3 minutes ago, purplealster said:

Is this an advert?

The original might have been, but I'm not sure my response post would be used as an advert

It sounds like a good school my only reservation is that hillsong is close to being a cult.

I'm not sure I would have been happy with my kids going to a school associated to an organisation with a well publicised sexual abuse problem, but as others have said people are free to make their own choice on the experience they want for their kids.

Yes I just did the UK one for 21/22 and they owe me a fair bit there to

Going to be a good July/August

Pickford's have always been pretty good whenever I've moved internationally in the past. Wouldn't hesitate to use them again.

At the Marvel stadium right now watching my first ever AFL game (or indeed any Aussie rules game).

Incredibly good fun to watch but totally bonkers, and it's going to take a while to get my head around the rules 

Any shortcuts to understanding this game?

On 26/05/2022 at 22:16, Blue Flu said:

It won't be nor shouldn't be a matter of not letting more migrants in, just hopefully putting the breaks on turbo immigration. The reason being the country can not simply manage. Infrastructure from housing to Hospitals to roads simply won't cope.  

I always get a flutter of joy in my heart when I read statements like this from people who have benefited from migration themselves.

(Note the obvious irony/sarcasm)

Reminds me of the European migrants to UK who voted for Brexit because they thought too many Europeans where migrating to UK. They too didn't see the irony in their position

8 hours ago, Nora93 said:

 

I believe I have right to terminate the 2 year agreement under those circumstances.

 

You absolutely have the right to terminate your agreement, you are not a slave. However your employer and immigration also have the right to terminate their reciprocal agreements under the sponsorship visa too, being a grown up is hard and often requires compromise 

I agree with almost everything Marissa wrote. If you are fixed on leaving your employer/mate in the lurch you should offer to recompense then (I'm absolutely sure given the cost of sponsorship that they only incurred that cost because you are their friend not because restaurant managers are hard to find). I did disagree with the "why did you get pregnant" question, everyone has the right to choose when/if they have kids, but what they don't have is the right to expect everyone else to suspend their rights and needs to accommodate your wants

Remember that if your visa gets revoked it is also likely that your partner's will as well, then you won't have their income coming in either.

Some serious soul searching required. Also some serious humble pie required as I'm sure your employer/now ex-friend is thinking even if you do stay I can no longer rely on you.

Bit of a technical answer here to expand on above.

ANZ may offer mortgages but, like almost every other retails bank, they don't underwrite them.

Where as in the UK (and most civilised societies) a decision in principle is worth something, over here it just means the bank would look at you. Until you submit an actual application the underwriter mortgage houses (who have names you wouldn't normally see on the high street) have no idea about you and unless you meet their criteria they will turn you down even though the bank has said yes

I don't know what the mitigation to this is, but just wanted to let you know a decision in principle is absolutely worthless in Australia

I've not heard of any, there are plenty that would look at you if you had three years of Oz contract experience and would be throwing cash at you, but right now you'll struggle

(I advise FSI clients, and despite helping them derive their investment decision rules, they still won't look at giving me a loan until I've done 9 months in post)

Your history in the UK makes little difference to banks here so the fact you contracted for the same people in the UK is irrelevant, doubly so when you highlight the fact that you were not working for them from Aug-Nov - essentially signposting, this income is volatile and not guaranteed.

Once you have a tax return (and a contract with at least 6 months to run under your belt) you will be in a good place to get a mortgage. However your best bet might be to dip into permanent employment, get the mortgage then go back contracting.

Also you don't say what visa you have, if it isn't PR then you will have this sort of rate discrimination until you get to PR.

Good luck, but honestly you aren't the first to get here and realise mortgages aren't as easy to get your hands on (at decent rates) as they are in most other countries

2 hours ago, 31Hillbury said:

Invitation to apply.

Having been waiting for a visa grant for over two years. I do hope they open the flood gates to those of us who were invited to apply before covid and allow us to continue our lives and dreams.

Surely we make up part of that talent pool. 

F'ing 'ell that's one long drawn out wait you've had, genuinely feel for you, hope it goes your way soon.

If it makes you feel better the last two years have been all fire/lockdown/flood so maybe by the time you get over here we will be back to normality of sunshine constantly...

Are you sure it hasn't already passed (the submission date) I thought it was only open for 4 weeks, which would explain why you can't access it now 

Hopefully someone with more concrete knowledge will be along soon

Well given the 187 required employer sponsorship, you almost certainly have an agent, so i would be asking them how they have stuffed this up!

9 hours ago, imarcq said:

Thanks again. No it wasn't always my intention to sell the house. I only really decided to come back to Australia in the last year. So it looks as if I wont have to declare any gain in UK. Thank you. 

Slight change to your wording, you will have to declare the gain in the UK, but it is likely the gain will be zero 

45 minutes ago, EmilyVio said:

ok, so this is the first I have heard of this car timeframe! We don't arrive until late August so I might see if we can buy one now from London and collect on arrival, do you think this would work?

Similar timeframes for most new cars in the UK at the moment too, in England Audi are 18 month waiting list for a number of models (and not just the rate ones some of the standard A3 models)

In Aus we looked at a Corolla and told nothing not already sold coming into the country before July and there is a waiting list for those

I'm not sure, you might be able to from a broker but unlikely from a dealer, I had to go and sign in person.

It will also depend if you need finance to buy it, you won't get finance without proof of an AUS income and residential address

4 hours ago, EmilyVio said:

Hi there,

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to me.  That is totally mental and also pretty stressful.  Helpful though as has managed my expectations (!) and now think it might make sense to stagger our arrival.  

My husband will have a job but think I'm not going to get one until we have house and school sorted.  Not really sure how we could both have jobs with no school and househunting which is sounding like a full time job in itself!

Another question from me ... what is the standard lease length over there?  

Thanks

Just as an aside the thing we found harder than rental was getting a car.

Like the UK the new car market is a disaster due to the global shortage. Almost everywhere had a minimum 3 months wait for a new car (and then you were choosing from on order stock not your own colour/model choice) and the second hand market is going for near new prices if you can find a car in good condition.

Getting a car we were happy with was more problematic than the rental.

Basically, it's great once you are setup, the setting up is a right royal pain in the bum...

2 hours ago, AltyMatt said:

I reckon IKEA is like McDonalds - the same worldwide.

Bunnings is pretty similar to B&Q, although I remember as a child B&Q had a panel of doorbells you could play with which Bunnings should copy.

I don't know if Bunnings is similar to B&Q never been in a Bunnings. However IKEA is exactly the same furniture in AUS as it is in Sweden and the UK (in fact anywhere)

As part of my past corporate life I did loads of work on logistics with IKEA, the reason they are so cheap is that they sell the same stuff in every country, the only difference is where it needs a plug and they have to put a local plug into the cord ...

I didn't do the kid bit but we recently did the move over and found a place to rent.

It took 5 weeks, and we could go anywhere, in any size of property and had a very healthy budget ($1250 week) we could go to. 

So I imagine with you needing a bigger property and it in a decent catchment area your choice will be more limited.

Have you already got jobs? If not don't expect any realtor to take your rental offer seriously until you do or unless you put down many months of advance rent. (Note legally they can't ask for this the most they can legally ask for is the month deposit and two weeks rent in advance, but you can offer and they can accept)

Unless you lived through the rental boom of somewhere like Islington in the very early 2000s (where you had to know a real estate agent personally to even get to see a property) you will never have had a comparative experience of just how competitive and difficult the Sydney housing market is right now.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/30/my-daughter-couldnt-start-school-sydney-family-rejected-for-35-rental-homes-despite-1000-a-week-budget

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/07/ive-never-felt-this-vulnerable-guardian-readers-share-their-rental-crisis-horror-stories

The story of the family that couldn't get a rental until they contracted their own agent to find properties sounds far fetched, but I can tell you it isn't, we traipsed round loads of places, some getting 60+ people through the door in the 15 minute viewing window for that week. Most had pre-applications already lodged so even if you applied straight after viewing you weren't first in the queue.

After 20 years of house ownership in the UK and being landlords ourselves back home the whole process was awful, we won't rent again after this one ends, buying as soon as we find the right place. 

Perth is a nice enough place, but far too boring for us

Oh I just noticed I didn't include furniture and white goods in my run down of costs.

$3.5k at IKEA

$2k on fridge, freezer, washer, dryer