Kimkathleen

15 hours ago, Steve Elliott said:

Hi Kimkathleen

Yes you are correct. Under the new rules which came into effect on July 1 2021, the 188c is now a 5 year provisional visa which allows you to apply for the 888 once you have held the 188c for 3 years. You can now forget any reference to 4 years as it is not relevant given you are applying under the new framework.

A number of other new measures re the 188c were also introduced on the same date including the composition mix of investments, audit requirements and a few more.

ASIC which is the financial services regulator is also taking more interest in 188c investment providers and the provision of the investment advice relating to the visa. 

I'm not sure where you are getting your information from but the DHA website is out of date and you MUST be very careful not to rely on anything published there.

With regards to the residency requirement, this is a pro rata requirement of 40 days per annum, so yes that's 120 days in the three years.

With regards to the holding period of the investments, best practice is to hold the significant complying investment until the 888 is granted.

I was discussing processing times with a colleague yesterday and given the government has given a high priority to business visas we are anticipating that processing times will reduce from the current 12 to 18 months down to a more realistic and palatable 6-9 months. Without knowing  exactly which funds you intend to invest in, you should be prepared to hold your VCPE investment for at least five years. Your country of origin can also have a bearing on processing times as the majority of applications actually processed in Hong Kong. The complexity of the application (usually around the source of funds) can also have a bearing.

I have been advising a young person who won the lottery here in Australia and whose 188c is being lodged today. The passport is from a country which will likely be processed here in Australia. I would expect the application to be processed relatively quickly given passport and simplicity of the source of funds. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions.

 

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your very prompt and helpful reply and is exactly what I wanted to hear as it means a few long holidays and we’ve met the requirements.  I believe we will probably be processed in Adelaide for our 188C as we’re based in the UK and our funds will mainly be from the sale of my husband’s business  which has recently completed with the balance from the sale of a second home, so it should be a fairly simple audit trail. We have already completed our own due diligence on investment companies and plan to go with of the larger companies mainly due to their rigour in ensuring our funds will always be compliant. 

We’ve been nominated by Western Australia and their only stipulation regarding our investments is that we must agree to reinvest our $5m in any WA assets which could include our main residence once we get PR, so we wouldn’t need to pay the eye-watering additional 7% stamp duty. We’ve also agreed a further sum which will be invested in WA prior to applying for our 888. Fortunately, our $5m complying investment does not need to favour WA during the 188 stage so it makes it easier to choose which funds to invest in. 

We’ve received a request today to send a signed letter specifying exactly which of our funds from our SALP will be used for the complying investment, so I’m hoping it means things will move quite quickly now, although we did only lodge our application end of November. 
 

Thanks again for your reply and I’ll let you know how quickly our 188C gets processed. 
 

On 25/05/2021 at 23:55, Steve Elliott said:

Hi DJT

I spoke to a colleague last night. She does a lot of business visas and she concurred that she advises all clients not to apply for the 888, before they have held the investment for the minimum period for grant. Processing times are certainly accelerating at a rapid speed at the moment.

Just reach out when you are ready.

We’re in the process of applying for our 188C under the new rules and trying to do a bit of forward planning for when we are able to apply for our 888 and are a bit confused about it. We understand that we’re able to apply after 3 years assuming we’ve met the residence requirement. Does this mean the minimum period of grant is now 3 years instead of 4 as some of the documents still say you must have had your investment for 4 years? If so, I assume everything will be updated to reflect that? Also is the 40 days per year the requirement so it would be 120 days after 3 years or would it still need to be based on 4 years? If the processing time is  shorter than 12 months then we’d have a problem if we applied after 3 years but need the investment in place for 4 years.