Ken

My ceremony was back in 2016 long before Covid. It still took 8 or 9 months between Approval (which was posted the same day as the test) and Ceremony. In the end the Ceremony was one organised by the department as the local council waiting list was just getting longer and longer.

I live in Australia, what fee am I charged to hold large amounts of money? | Wise Help Centre If you want to know how to find that on their website, at the very top of the screen select the Multi Currency Account drop down and from that choose pricing. On the screen that appears you'll see a list of Account Pricing all say "Free" until you get to the last item "Hold 50+ currency balances" where you click on "See Free Allowances".

But surely if the visa is linked to the other passport immigration wouldn't even let you in? You're going to have to produce the correct passport to get in to the country and that'll activate the visa.

Two weeks of warm weather in England and they declare a drought. The UK has a lot of hours of rainfall but not many mms. London gets an average of 584mm of rainfall annually whereas Brisbane gets 1200mm. Sydney 1175mm, Hobart 670mm and Canberra 629mm. Of course not all Australian cities have high rainfall as there's Perth 588mm, Melbourne 531mm and Adelaide 517mm but there's always Darwin 1,727mm to raise the average!

Yes, Super is the Australian equivalent of a Personal Pension Plan (with flexible withdrawals rather than an annuity) whereas the Aged Pension is a Social Security Payment to those in need.

Centrelink don't allow you to not claim. As they see if there's money that you are owed that you aren't claiming then you can't be poor enough to need the Aged Pension.

Where you become UK resident under more than one case the one with the earliest date applies. If they are same date it's irrelevant which case applies. As to the table, I am sure that you are aware that to be classified as non-resident in the UK you can't be in the UK for more than a certain number of days? It depends on the which regulation applies as to how many days you can be in the UK. Under some circumstances it's as little as 15 days, in others 120 days. But that's in a full year. When it's a split year it's only the first part of the year (the part of the year when you don't want to be UK resident) that counts and you don't get the full year allowance of days. It's reduced to the number of days in the table. If you spent no time in the UK in the year until the date you arrived then you don't need to worry about this table at all because 0 days is below the threshold of every one of these tests.

There are a lot of companies that will sell you a virtual UK number. Most only do landline numbers but a few do have UK mobile numbers such as Devyce. Devyce Expats – Devyce Just google whatever you want these days. Someone will be out there selling the service.

If you hadn't lived in Australia in the previous year then yes, only being in Australia for 2.5months might allow you to claim to be a non-resident (although you wouldn't want to do that if you have Australian income as the tax rules are less favourable to non-residents than they are to residents), but you did become a resident back in 2018. Once you do that you remain a resident until you leave, it's not something that needs to be acquired each and every year. Similarly you become a UK resident again on the date you returned. I'm confused as why do you even want to be treated as a UK resident for the part of the year when you weren't living them since that would mean paying taxes in the UK on your worldwide income for that part of the year. Surely you would prefer to only pay taxes in the UK on your worldwide income for the part of the year you were living there (a process called split year)? Based on what you've said you were an Australian Resident 1st July - 16th September paying taxes in Australia on your worldwide income* for that split year (and liable for tax as a foreign resident on Australian income only for the remainder of the year) and a UK Resident for 17th September to 5th April paying taxes in the UK on your worldwide income for that split year (and liable for tax as a foreign resident on UK income only for the beginning of the year). *Assumes you were a permanent resident. If you were only a temporary resident you would only be taxed on Australian income.

If you are self-employed or otherwise running your own business then yes you'll need a couple of years, but as an employee you only need a few payslips unless it's a casual position or you are still in a probationary period. Not sure where the housing market will be in a year's time but that's when mortgage rates may start rising again! Don't forget to take into account how much more complicated it will be to sell you house after you've left the country and that (depending on how soon you sell after leaving the country) you may have CGT to pay in the UK as a non-resident selling UK residential property. Even if the gain is small enough to be covered by your tax free allowances it's red tape to deal with.

Geelong is practically a suburb of Melbourne (it's more accurate to call Geelong part of Melbourne than it is to call the Central Coast part of Sydney) and indeed the countryside between Melbourne and Geelong is all being built up so fast that the distinction will soon disappear. Bendigo on the other hand is 150km or a 2 hour train journey away (not much less by car) so it's a bit different from the outer suburbs of Melbourne - although I do remember people who commuted from Norwich to London daily so it's possible.

It's taxable in Australia if you are a citizen or permanent resident. Note that a lump sum pension paid to an Australian should be taxed only in Australia, but an uncrystallised lump sum is taxed in the UK and the AFE (Applicable Fund Earnings) is taxed in Australia. The AFE is the growth in the fund since you became an Australian resident. The value when you moved to Australia is tax free in these circumstance. This is important because if it is taken as a pension the only part that is tax free is the UPP (Undeducted Purchase Price) which is purely the pension contributions you made (not those made by your employer or the growth before you moved to Australia) - and then only if the ATO has agreed to that figure. You should be able to claim tax paid in the UK as an offset under the terms of the double taxation treaty in which case the total amount of tax you have to pay would be the same (other than any FX differences) whether you reclaim the UK tax paid from HMRC or from the ATO (as a tax offset). However if the ATO restrict this offset on the grounds that part of it relates to the tax free portion you might get less that way so I'd reclaim it from HMRC just to be sure (I'm not certain of the ATO view of this so I'm probably being overly cautious).

You can't have a hot water tank outside in the UK. The pipes would freeze in winter. Sure the water leak would be outside but it would be way more expensive due to the frequency. In Canada (and other really cold parts of the world) you can't even have pipework inside an outside wall.

There is nothing in the regulations that restrict them to only holding one ceremony per month. One a week would exceed the ~2000 test per month.

Wise is unfortunately not a suitable place to keep a large amount of AUD long term. If you hold a balance of more than AUD 23,000 for more than 3 days you have to pay a fee (equivalent to 1.6% per year). This is because of the Capital Requirements rules imposed by the Australian government which incur extra costs on "Purchase Payment Facilities" (or what you probably call Money Transfer Agencies) for holding customer funds. They obviously do charge you to convert as do all banks/transfer agencies. Some banks hide that charge within the FX rate and then pretend it's "commission free" to convert but if their exchange rates are poor it can be much more expensive. Always look at who will give you the most AUD after all fees. There is a fee to transfer from your Wise account to an Australian Bank Account but it is only 57 cents (that's AUD 0.57) per bank transfer. I don't think they would be charging such a small amount to make a profit. It's clearly the cost to them that they are charging rather building this into their FX rate. Withdrawals by Debit Card are fee free (well to you it is - the merchant will be paying as with any other debit card).

If you have a debit card account with Wise they can give you your own UK account number and sort code so it's just like having a bank account with Wise (except you can easily transfer into a different currency and if you spend with the debit card in any currency it will use which currency you have available in your account).

We've all been thinking it Bulya, but we didn't like to say.

I think you'll find that's been abolished in the UK too. Apparently a 1st class stamp is now 85p ($1.55).

Shiploads hasn't even got across the Bass Strait to Victoria yet. Their website shows 13 stores all in Tasmania. I think it'll be a long time before they get across the Nullabor.

The issue is more one of people who are up to date with their repayments moving overseas and then stopping making any further repayments. It happens with Child Support too. They can't be stopped from going overseas just because there are payments they need to make in the future.

I think that distorts the picture. Birmingham and Manchester are both in the middle of conurbations with populations of 2.5 million people but the West Midlands is only 909km2 while Greater Manchester is 1,276km2. Greater Brisbane isn't much smaller in terms of population (2.3 million) but is 15,826km2. Gold Coast is only 414km2 but it's population is only 540K so again far less dense than either Birmingham or Manchester.

Still a rarity in Melbourne.

Technically it's the courts that can force you to pay, but yes the SLC can get a court order. Options they can pursue (if you don't have the money or assets that can be sold) include making your employer take a deduction from pay each pay period or even requiring your bank to hand over a proportion of any money paid into your bank account. Because the Australian government have the same issue with the student loans of people who go overseas as the British government does, they have a mutual agreement.

I'm sure they won't need more than the first page since they are only looking to confirm your address. Normally the other pages only show bank transactions.

Normally you only need the first page of your bank statement as proof of address as that is the one with your address on it. Bank statements normally have an issue date (it's the date they were printed by the Bank) but of course not an expiry date. Are you sure the expiry date is a compulsory field?