Silver_Swan

Haha, yes we've been looking - we've found some places within the correct price range (mostly to the south though) and to be honest its the same price as we pay at home, so not too much of a surprise. The biggest issue is trying to understand which area will have the nicest "vibe" for us...!

Hello, We're currently doing some research and trying to narrow down our choice of suburbs for house searching, and would love some input! We are a professional couple in our late 30's, no kids, pretty outdoorsy - like cycling, diving, surfing, climbing, walking etc, but equally enjoy a nice glass of wine. Our dream property would tick all the following boxes (and I realise we'll likely have to compromise on some!) Nice area which has a bit of life to it - a couple of nice places to eat and drink would be ideal Within 30 minutes drive of a surf beach Modern property Minimum 3 bedrooms, 4 preferred Garage (for storage) and parking for two Within one hour (by car or train) to work (my husband will be working right next to North Sydney Station, I work in financial services - so I expect to be near central Sydney somewhere, my husband will also be flying fairly regularly) A decent sized outdoor space - we want to be able to have a barbie! Under $800/week. Could stretch to $1000 if we really had to Which suburbs will tick the most of our boxes?!

this looks like it would be really helpful... but the images are too small to read the numbers

thanks - just got to your message and I've just been reading the exact same link - sounds like we'd be classed as resident for tax purposes, but as temporary residents wouldn't be liable for tax on UK income?

Having read a bit more into it my understanding is we'd be Australian residents for tax purposes, but as temporary residents (482 visa) we'd not be taxed on foreign income, which is better!

Thanks for your comprehensive reply Ken... On point 4) whilst we've been outside of the UK for two years we haven't been in any one country long enough to be deemed tax resident there - so while we don't meet the requirements for automatic UK resident, we also don't meet the requirements for automatic overseas resident, so as my accountant explained it we'd still be classed as resident since we have a property here - and otherwise where are we resident of? Although having just looked on gov.uk I'm not convinced our second year away would class as resident since we didn't set foot in the UK for the 2018/2019 tax year. I'm confused about the CGT implications though - my understanding was if you'd rented out your property you do not qualify for full private residence relief - and therefore have to pay CGT proportionate to the period it was rented?

Obviously if we return to the UK then it would affect it - but that’s what I’m trying to work out. Assuming we like Australia our intention would be to apply for PR - and I don’t want to find out we have a huge tax bill a couple of years down the line...

Hello, We are currently going through a 482 visa application and trying to decide what to do with our UK property, and would like some advice. For the last two years we have travelled abroad and rented our UK home, we were still deemed UK tax residents during that period as we weren’t settled in one country and were not working. Now we are looking at a move to Oz, and just thought we’d keep our house and continue renting it, however the more I’ve looked into I’ve realised there might be some pretty big financial pitfalls. We purchased the house (jointly owned by my husband and I) in Dec 2013 for £300k, lived in it until Oct 2017, during that time we did some extensive building work - we basically took the existing house back to brick work to start again and added an extension that doubled the size. The total cost of work was probably in the region of £150k, maybe as much as £200k. The house is probably worth £650k now. We didn’t keep all the receipts for the work we had done but I guess bank statements and credit cards could be used to get a more accurate record? Our house is currently rented out, the monthly rent is £2000. Our mortgage is around £1600 (variable) with roughly half (£800) being interest. So my questions: 1) If we continued to rent the house then the UK income I believe would come under the tax free threshold - is this correct? Would we still be entitled to the threshold as non resident? 2) if we rented the property would we have to pay tax on it in Aus? How is that calculated? 3) if we sold the property I understand we’d have to pay CGT. In terms of proving what we spent on improving the property what would we need to provide - would credit card statements be enough or would we need receipts and invoices for everything? 4) how much CGT would we pay if we sold now (using Dec 2019 for ease of calculations) versus if we sold in say two years time? My understanding is: Dec 2019 Owned property for 6yrs (72mths), lived in property for 47mths, Rented it for 25mths. Gain on property (worst case) £200,000 £200k/72mths = £2777/mth 47 + 18 = 65 x £2777 = £180,500 so CGT liability = £19,500, which would be inside our annual threshold. Alternatively if we kept the property and sold in two years time - Dec 2021: Owned property for 8yrs (96mths), lived in property for 47mths, Rented it for 49mths. Gain on property (I guess this would probably be a bit higher, circa 4% over two years based on current rises = value of £626k) £226,000 £226k/96mths = £2354/mth 47 + 9 = 56 x £2354 = £132k so CGT liability = £94k. £24k threshold, so we’d pay tax on £70, at either 18% or 28%. (£12,600 / £19,600) 5) if we sell the house how do we work out if we are basic rate or higher rate tax payers? Our “normal” jobs would both be higher rate - but do they only look at UK income (ie. income from renting our property) or is is based on what we’d be earning in Aus? thanks in advance for any help and advice you can give!