Philip

Being a British citizen and having a passport doesn't entitle you to have a UK bank account. It is legal for a bank to close an account, most bank have a clause in their terms and conditions saying something like they can close your account for any reason with X days notice (usually around 2 months). It could be argued that they have not treated you fairly, and this would merit a "formal complaint" which could be escalated to the UK financial ombudsman if not resolved satisfactorily. However barclays has made their decision and the ombudsman will not be making them keep your account open - at the most they may just give you a £50 "goodwill" payment (which would cover the forex fees I suppose). Without a functioning card reader there probably isn't much you could do without physically going to the UK - if you did have one you could have sent the money to yourself using Wise/Revolut for lower fees, and you could also have kept it in GBP. Alternatively if you have access to a UK address, lie about your residence status

I was researching this for my own knowledge and found the following information which may be useful - I have no experience with those services (not least because it will be 15 years before I can get my UK pensions) https://gmtax.com.au/super-uk-pensions/uk-pensions/uk-pensions-lump-sum/ https://www.directdocs.com.au/ozstomember.html

Well my UK house was finally sold and I got the money via Wise in 24 hours. Surprisingly, neither Wise nor any of the Australian banks involved asked for any documentation - and it was a 6 figure amount. This was the first time I had used my Wise account too (opened years ago in anticipation of sending money to Aus) which makes it even more surprising. They did charge several thousand quid but in the end it just works out as being a slightly worse exchange rate. I would have used Atlantic Money as a backup if Wise failed for some reason, but given their constraints, it would have needed to be done in 10 or more transactions and/or 3 transactions in person in the UK. Wise could do it in a single transaction and there was no need to interact with anybody at all. I have used the money to purchase a property here in Aus, and even more surprisingly my conveyancer did not care about the source of funds one bit. I did ask and he just told me a funny story of a dodgy client who sent the funds from 50 accounts in different names... unlike my UK solicitor, who when buying our UK house spent more time grilling us over the provenance of every pound than on the actual conveyancing (but to be fair it was fairly simple)

I would have thought that the Aus government, upon receiving the details of a foreign passport as part of the application for citizenship by descent, would prevent that foreign passport from subsequently being used to apply for a visa, however I know of people who have managed to get a visa (evisitor / ETA) and were allowed to Australia using the smartgates, so they never even had to tell an immigration officer they were actually a citizen.

For UK CGT, you work out the proportion of time it was your main residence and that portion is exempt (Private Residence Relief). For a property to be regarded as your main residence, it must actually be your home and you can only have one main residence at one time. If you have more than one residence which is actually your home, you can write to HMRC to choose one as your main residence (thus tax-free) but this is only retrospective for 2 years. Also the last 9 months of ownership is exempt regardless, and the whole period of ownership is counted regardless of which country you lived in. So roughly speaking with some assumptions - if you owned property 1 for 28 years and lived there for 1 year 3 months, 2/28ths of the gain is tax-free and CGT is due on 26/28ths of the gain. If you owned property 2 for 26 years and lived there for 7 years 3 months (from 2000) plus 2 years (from 2025), 10/26ths of the gain is tax-free and 16/26ths is taxable. If you give a property away or sell it for less than its market value to a related party such as children, it's treated as selling it for market value, so you should get a market valuation if you want to do this. For Australia, again you can only have one main residence at one time (unless moving house when there can be a 6 month overlap) and that period is exempt from tax. Different to the UK is that every time after moving out of a property, you can continue treating it as your main residence and thus tax-free for up to 6 years, which would suit someone who is renting (or living in a property that you expect to appreciate in value less). But as a foreign property you would only be taxed on the gain during the period you are an Australian resident. This period may have started on the day you arrived, or maybe when you were granted a permanent visa. If you return to the UK to work and stop being an Australian tax resident, you are treated as disposing of the properties on the day you depart, and CGT is due. If you don't want to pay tax on the unrealised gain at that point, you can choose to wait until you eventually sell, but then the ownership period when you are a non-resident is also taxed, and you would pay the non-resident tax rate (though you might be paying a high rate anyway if you have lots of income in the year you depart). However, I believe the UK double tax treaty lets you avoid Australian CGT in this case provided that UK CGT is paid on the same asset covering the same time period. So if you are moving back to the UK temporarily it is potentially wiser to sell both while you are there.

From the quoted link: So it isn't clear because they don't know and haven't decided. The old (actually, current) rules relating to IHT are here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inheritance-tax-deemed-domicile-rules Someone mentioned that you have to move to Australia permanently and be out of the UK for 5 tax years before UK IHT ceases to apply to your worldwide estate, which I believe is correct. You can only be UK "non-dom" for income tax if you are actually tax resident in the UK, so if you are tax resident in Australia the changes will not affect you. To avoid UK IHT you have to put assets into trust before you become UK domiciled, but income from assets in trust is typically taxed at 45% in the UK. If you already domiciled in the UK and you put assets into trust you basically pay (less) IHT up front and possibly on an ongoing basis too.

I've come across https://atlantic.money/ which claims to charge a flat fee of £3 to send however much your UK bank account will let you send them by Faster Payments in one transaction.

Monzo, a UK app-only bank, doesn't require proof of address to open an account. But I wouldn't recommend it to receive money sent from Australia - it is better to use something like Wise and send to a different UK bank. HSBC will let you open a UK account from Australia even if you don't have an HSBC Australia account. But HSBC UK is very picky and they may debank you if you get a lot of money in and don't keep most of it with HSBC. You should not change your address on an Australian bank, from Australian to overseas, until you are sure you won't receive any more interest from that bank while still resident in Australia. This is because non-residents are taxed 10% on bank interest and this is withheld when your account has an overseas address. But if you are still resident the 10% will be wrongly withheld and you will have to sort it out on your tax return. You won't be a first home buyer in the UK if you have ever owned residential property in any country. It is possible to get a UK mortgage in those circumstances with the part-time job, depending on how much the job pays, but they are very unlikely to take into account the income from Australia unless you can somehow satisfy them that the amount in GBP will be regular and that it will be brought to the UK. You would need a specialist lender, probably with the help of a broker as high street banks generally can't be bothered with any complex circumstances.

Thanks for your reply. Centrelink said I could lodge a claim in July 2024 once I know our actual income for the current tax year - that would indicate nothing gets "lost" with a lump sum. They couldn't give a clear answer on the fortnightly claim. When we were leaving Australia in 1995 my dad would have gone to a medicare office to tell them (we moved to a country without reciprocal health care) but the form he filled in probably got lost, or there was no form and they just didn't act on it so never cancelled our medicare. Anyway I got it all sorted now. They said I should have applied for a yellow medicare card after moving to the UK https://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+medicare+card&tbm=isch but given that you can no longer do it at an office and the email system takes 5 months (as I posted on the other thread) I'm not sure how that is meant to work for a UK resident staying in 2-3 hotels over the course of 1-2 weeks and then going home...

So I called again, the agent just said "yup I can see you emailed over a month ago, I'll process it now". It then took over an hour, no wonder the regular waiting time is 5 months Which minister decided to stop in person enrolments? At the Services Australia location I went to some staff were just sitting around until the next client came in @Kramvi as it's been more than a month and you haven't received your card yet, call during normal business hours and hopefully they will do yours straight away too

Yeah I went to services australia and they said they are not involved in enrolling. PRs and only PRs, not citizens, can enrol online, possibly immediately. But if you want a card for a family then you have to do it via the email service (or post). The call centre person said they are processing emails sent in Sept '23 right now. The problem is that I apparently have a card which was meant to be cancelled 5 years after my family stopped living in Australia (over 20 years ago) but that didn't happen. It's linked to my childhood address, but they won't tell me the number. I'll try what the person suggested about calling at 8.30am on Monday

I don't know why it says "you will get your card in 3-4 weeks" because I just called the medicare phone line and they said it will take 4-5 months from the date you sent the email. As long as you keep any receipts for now you should be able to claim whatever back later. One reason it may be taking so long is that you can skip the queue by calling during business hours. If you manage to get through to someone who can do enrolment on the phone they may be able to do it immediately

Has anyone here claimed this? I think we are eligible from the date of arrival in Aus as my child and I are citizens (wife is PR). My main question is: if I claim now for fortnightly payments, do I just lose the payments for the past 10 weeks, or do I get them later on when they do the balancing? If the former, then it would make more sense to claim a lump sum at the end of this tax year and then maybe fortnightly from July. BTW, is it really that rare for citizens to leave Aus as children and return to live for the first time as adults?? Things like mygov, centrelink ATO etc keep getting errors because I don't fit the box of new immigrant or a resident who has grown up being in the system. Today I spent 3 hours on the phone to centrelink until they realised someone entered one letter of my name incorrectly in 1990, but my parents never even claimed any benefits. Also discovered medicare has been sending a new card to my childhood home every 5 years for the past 25 years - and I learned that UK residents are actually meant to get a medicare card with a different colour, though I never needed the reciprocal healthcare when I visited.

Just for information, banks will not withhold any tax when the address is in Australia and the interest is less than $120 per year / $10 per month.

Personally with a 7 month deadline I would use an agent, because I would want to get it right the first time. My deadline was about 11 months but at the time I didn't realise UK applications were being processed so quickly, I thought it would take at least 6 months.