Ken

You may be right. Despite a UN commitment in 1988, Polio has still not been completely eradicated.

Even once Australia is fully vaccinated it will just take a single person to start an outbreak. None of the vaccine are 100% effective and even where they are highly effective that effectiveness is expected to decline over time. The vaccines are a great boon as they appear to prevent the worst symptoms and will significantly reduce the number of deaths, but they're not going to prevent outbreaks from happening. It will take decades to eradicate the disease from the planet.

It's not actually the money laundering laws as such. It's the requirement to comply with both UK financial services rules and Australian financial services rules (both of which include money laundering laws). For your original mortgage they didn't have to comply with Australian rules because you didn't live in Australia but for the new loan you are an Australian resident so they have to obey Australian law - including that the person you deal with is the holder of an Australian Financial Services licence. Probably your UK bank don't have a mortgage consultant in the UK with an Australian Financial Services licence (perhaps they do as there are a lot of Australians working for UK banks, but the banks risk managers probably don't know enough about Australian law anyway for them to know what the risks to the bank are). It's not impossible for them to meet the requirements but as you say it's in the too hard box. Australian banks incidentally don't give mortgages on property in the UK because they would have to comply with UK law (as well as Australian law) and again that puts it into the too hard box.

That's a very sound assumption. You would think you would have to do that, but no. The rules are that when the Main Residence rules apply (and even when you theoretically "electing" to apply them to a period after you stopped living there) you ignore the capital gain - meaning it isn't reported at all. If I was designing the tax form I'd have a box for the gain and another for the main residence deduction but the ATO have a much more Cavalier approach and just don't want to know anything.

It's a long time since I filled in that form so I can't remember what options there are other than "working" but yes you definitely have to report that you visited the UK after being granted PR - you even need to record the period from Feb 2017 to March 2017 for completeness - and as the period in the UK totals more than 6 months you'll need to provide a UK police check.

You can open a multi-currency account with Wise (used to be Transferwise) or one of the other transfer companies (I mention Wise specifically because they now operate as a proper bank account complete with debit card) almost instantly and then put as much as you want in to Australian Dollars. Unlike with the Australian banks you don't have to walk in to a bank in Australia and prove your identity before being able to make a withdrawal. Once you've moved you'll probably still want to get an account with a bank in Australia but for having a debit card from day one it would have been very useful for us (we'd opened an account with one of the big-4 banks in advance, and even had a card but we still couldn't use it until we'd gone in to a branch to activate it).

As an Australian citizen (or PR) living in Australia you are liable to pay tax in Australia on your Capital Gains Worldwide. However you probably won't need to pay any tax in this instance, and even if you do it won't be much. Was this the only property you owned at the time you sold it? There's a principal private residence exemption in Australia just as there is in the UK and in Australia you can keep a property as your principal private residence for up to 6 years after you ceased living there. Unfortunately you can only have one principal private residence at a time (other than for a six month bridging while you are buying and selling). But if you are out of luck there, then you are still only liable for the gain made in the period you were resident in Australia - i.e. the base for the gain is not what you paid for the property but how much it was worth when you moved to Australia. This can be based on a valuation or upon averaging the gain across the periods. Because you owned the property for more than 12 months you are also eligible for the 50% discount, so you only have to pay tax on half the gain in this period. A lot of people ask about the double taxation agreement. Had you had to pay any tax in the UK you would be able to deduct the amount paid from the Australian tax due under the double taxation agreement - but as in your instance when you haven't paid anything in the UK you can't claim that you are being double taxed. Feel free to PM me if you need more detailed assistance.

It is perfectly normal for Australian currency accounts to have a BSB, for GBP currency accounts to have a sort-code, and for USD accounts to have an ABA. Businesses need those to give to their customers so they can pay in to those accounts. There may also be a local account number (say a sort-code if they are UK based) but that can't usually be used to pay foreign currency in to the account as the UK's sort-code system is designed around GBP payments. IBAN numbers can be used to pay in to both GBP and EUR accounts and so can be used for GBP without needing a sort-code, but they aren't available for AUD (or USD).

Have you asked HSBC about how to transfer Australian Dollars in to their account? I'd be very surprised if they don't have an Australian account number (including BSB) that you can use to do so as that's how most foreign currency accounts operate.

The first super funds were introduced in 1991. You were doing quite well to have one recording growth since 1884.

The US and Spain have mutual agreements with the UK whereas Australia refuses to pay anything for people who worked for 30 years in Australia but then retired in the UK.

Why would the UK government help you out when you are going to spend their money in Australia and not in the UK? The UK government does give social security benefits (although not the old age pension itself) to people who have worked their entire lives overseas (e.g. in Australia) but now live in the UK. Note that they would need UK residency (so be British citizens or have some equivalent of a CPV) and to have been resident for at least 2 years for most benefits. The UK government can afford to pay those social security benefits as they are going to be spent in the UK and so the government will recover much of it from VAT and taxes on the companies and employees of those companies that it is spent on even if there is no multiplier effect - it's not like when a pension is sent overseas and never seen again. The UK government has long attempted to confuse UK voters by calling one of it's taxes "National Insurance" rather than the more accurate "Additional Income Tax" that it really is, leading many British tax payers they are getting their own money back when the pension is paid rather than the social security benefit that it actually is. In Australia in comparison they make it very clear that the Aged Pension is a social security benefit. There is no ring fencing of National Insurance, it all goes in to exactly the same Treasury account as Income Tax. It doesn't get invested for your retirement and the pension is paid out from current tax (and NI) receipts. The UK government could decide to stop paying pensions to anyone overseas it it wanted to (well technically anyone in the UK too - but those pensioners live in their constituencies and vote) and might have to as the whole system has always been one huge Ponzi scheme.

I've always been a firm believer of paying everything you can on your credit card. Why pay now what you can pay in 25 to 55 days time for the same price? Although of course it does only make a difference if you are doing something with the money in the meantime (personally I use a mortgage offset account so I'm reducing the amount of interest I'm paying for those 25 to 55 days). But you should never use a credit card for something you can't afford to pay today since if you need to borrow on one the interest rates are (in most cases) extortionate. Most credit cards will allow you to set up a direct debit for the full balance each month so you don't really need a lot of discipline to pay it off in full each month - the discipline comes from not paying more than you can afford in the first place.

You do need to declare they are wood and they get inspected for any signs of infestation and possibly fumigated but normally there isn't a problem - in fact the wooden shipping crate it's in is probably more of a risk than the wooden furniture.

Sorry to hear that Westly. Have you tried "The Art or Reading Minds" by Henrik Fexeus? It's available on Amazon. The Art of Reading Minds: Understand Others to Get What You Want: Fexeus, Henrik: Amazon.com.au: Books

I don't see it happening despite Australia already having a free movement of people trade deal with New Zealand. The UK has a much larger population than New Zealand and Australia would undoubtedly be concerned about large numbers of unskilled people suddenly turning up. You should also note that the New Zealand trade deal stripped New Zealanders of the opportunity to use the skilled migration pathways and it should be expected a similar scheme for the UK would do the same. I believe there's a new scheme to set up a PR/citizenship pathway for New Zealanders but nearly all are here as temporary residents. There are many disadvantages to always being a temporary resident.

Used SevenSeasWorldWide MoveCube and couldn't recommend them highly enough. If their smallest MoveCube (2 cubic metres/70 cubic feet) is too big for you they do smaller shipments down to individual boxes too. Seven Seas Worldwide Shipping United Kingdom | International Shipping Specialists

Yes, that's right.

Just got the card so I'm yet to use it but I suspect it going to save me quite a bit on International Transaction Fees when I have to pay in USD or other foreign currency.

If you lived her for a few years and then sold the property without returning to the UK it will still be liable for UK CGT. Non-residents are liable for CGT on residential property in the UK. Note that it's only gains made after you left the country that count (or after 6/4/2015 when the law changed if you left the UK before that). You are also required to report the sale within 30 days even if no CGT is payable.

The contents of a 3-bed semi should easily fit into a 20ft container. 20ft might not sound like much, but it's only the length. Usable capacity is 32.6 cubic metres or 1,150 cubic ft it you want to keep it old school.

For Australian Tax Purposes your Capital Gain on an asset for an immigrant will normally be the difference between its value when you took up residency in Australia (as a Permanent Resident) and its value when you sold it. If however you lived in the property before moving to OZ you can claim the private residence exemption for up to six years after you ceased to live there. Up to because you can only have one private residence at a time, If you've bought a new property to live in it's normally best to treat that as your private residence. Your mortgage isn't part of the equation as to whether or not you've made a profit on the sale.

No, you still have do self assessment if you are overseas but have UK income, it's just that HMRC don't provide a facility to complete the extra forms needed online so you either have to complete a paper return or pay for commercial software that's been developed to complete the extra forms. Note that the forms needed are downloadable from the HMRC website even if you don't have a login.

Permanent residency for immigration purposes and tax residency are two different things. If you are not tax resident in Australia and you don't have any untaxed Australian income then the withholding tax is all you have to pay in Australia and you don't need to complete a tax return (that's provided the ATO isn't asking for one because you haven't told them you're no longer resident). But the tax paid isn't gone, it reduces the tax to be paid on your UK tax return (I hope you weren't thinking you didn't have to declare the Australian interest on your UK tax return). You declare both the gross interest and the amount of tax you've paid, they calculate the UK tax due on the interest and deduct the tax you've already paid from that. It makes no difference whether you are earning interest on the money in the UK or Australia you still have to pay UK tax on it and for almost everyone the UK tax is more than the 10% Australian Withholding Tax (the only exception is if you're not earning enough to be paying tax). If you are getting a better interest rate in Australia than you can get in the UK then leave it in Australia.

Alan's a Tax Agent not a Financial Adviser - it's a completely different discipline. Andrew from Vista Financial would be your best bet for a Financial Adviser.