Marisawright

While you're an Australian resident, you get a tax concession for capital gains tax. Once you leave the country, you lose that concession. The result is that you'll pay DOUBLE the amount if you wait and sell after you leave.

Wrussell is talking about himself. He's one of the ones I recommended to you.

Perth is a smaller place than Melbourne or Sydney but there are certainly jobs around. The thing with a WHV is that you have to be flexible and do what's available. Sign up with several agencies.

Of course you can. You don't even need to know your Australian address. Just put the address of your hotel or hostel on the boxes. The shipping company will ring you when the boxes arrive in Australia and ask you where you want them delivered. https://www.sevenseasworldwide.com

The OP didn't criticise her parents for the decision at all. I was referring to why GGS made that comment.

I think he needs to consider why the last chef took off the minute he got PR...

It sounds like you need to consider your parents. Your daughter is young and she can move between Australia and England whenever she likes. Your parents are running out of choices - if they don't move back now, it will be too late and they will end their days where they don't want to be.

The "rough comments" were made because the parents were "ping ponging" back and forth after only a few years in each country, even though it damaged their daughter's education. That's a very long way from your situation.

I have had several communications with them about my pension. You are right, they always answer by snail mail, but they've always accepted my emails (or their online form) and have never asked me to confirm by post. Besides, I don't think the OP has much choice. If they want the lender to take the British pension into account, they're going to have to provide proof, arent' they?

If you were working, they wouldn't take your bank account as proof of salary, would they? They'd require proof of employment. Why should the pension be any different? Here's where you email to: https://www.gov.uk/international-pension-centre I know they can be slow, but that's not the lender's problem. If their procedures require proof of income, they need proof of income. It's not a question of Aussies thinking you can walk in and get a piece of paper - any lender, anywhere in the world, would want proof if they were doing their job properly.

I wasn't suggesting you should use that calculator. I'm referencing the article. It explains that IF you are dealing with a finance company that has a policy of using "HEM" (Household Expenditure Measure), they will compare your actual expenditure against the HEM and they will use the HIGHER of the two. Unreasonable, but that is how they work and it's non-negotiable. As you point out, the HEM is always going to be higher because you have no mortgage/rent. Therefore any lender which uses HEM won't lend to you. That is the explanation and no, of course call centre drones don't know how it works. The question is whether you can find any sensible lenders out there who have not adopted the lazy HEM method.

Yes it is cheaper ($2,900), however you also have to satisfy a financial requirement, meaning you must either have a lot of money in the bank, or a job with a certain minimum salary. For some people there is simply no way they can meet that requirement

If you think Australia is tough, you should try getting a partner into the UK.

The funny thing is that although people think a big SUV is safer, they are more likely to roll than an ordinary car, and the risk of whiplash is greater (because ordinary cars crumple and absorb some of the shock, whereas rigid-body SUV's don't and therefore more shock reaches your body).

Oops, sorry about that, computer problems. I have done further research and there is definitely no government regulation. It is possible the government will take some action, but the Royal Commission hasn't handed down its recommendations yet. So your dealer guy has no idea what he's talking about. The benchmark he's referring to is called the HEM (Household Expenditure Measure). There is no law that says banks have to use it. The Commonwealth Bank decided to adopt it in 2012 (essentially as an "efficiency" measure - i.e to save time and hang the customer) and gradually, all the other banks, and some (but not all) other lenders, followed suit. Here is an article that explains it: https://www.homeloanexperts.com.au/mortgage-calculators/living-expenses-calculator/ The most relevant sentence in that article is this: "When lenders ask you to estimate your living expenses, they take the higher of the HEM or your declared expenses." At the Royal Commission (as I'm sure you know), there have been repeated scandals about banks lending to people who can't afford it, and therefore many lenders are running scared and tightening their lending criteria - but the government has not given them any specific instructions. Each lender has made their own decision. It sounds as though the dealer finance company has decided to adopt HEM. So, the refusal has nothing to do with you being on a British pension, any Australian with the same income and expenses, from whatever source, would be in the same boat. The question is whether you can find a lender who is not using HEM (it's not compulsory). Ironically, it's likely the Royal Commission will ban the use of the HEM because for most working people, it under-estimates their real expenditure, and therefore it's part of the problem, not a solution! By the way, you seemed to imply that your situation, i.e. owning your property outright and living on a pension, was unusual in Australia. Certainly, living on a British pension is unusual (and it's scandalous that the British government freezes the pension), but there are many thousands of Australian pensioners who are "asset rich, cash poor". In Sydney and Melbourne, it's extremely common for someone in old age to be sitting in a fully-paid-off home. It's why reverse mortgages are growing in popularity in spite of their downsides.

It's very sad, because the reality is that big SUV's are killing machines as far as pedestrians, pets and cyclists are concerned. In an ideal world, people wouldn't be allowed to own them unless they could demonstrate a need for them. But the trouble is, when everyone else on the road is in one, you end up having to get one in self-defence.

It’s not a government regulation. All the institutions have tightened their lending criteria due to

Sorry, double posted for some reason.

Well, you can't go back in time, and if you wait a few more years it will only get worse, so now is the best time to go. If your child has thoughts of going to university, you need to get back and establish residency now (there's a 3 year residency rule).

You say the "income baseline" has been set around the minimum allowance for the Aussie State Pension, but I've been doing my research and i can find no evidence for that whatsoever. Happy to be proved wrong, but I can't find any sign that the government has set any kind of minimum income at all. I think the dealers may be telling you white lies - much easier to blame the government rather than blame their own finance companies. The thing is, if the criteria is set by the car finance companies, then each company makes their own decisions and others may have different rules - so it's worth checking. And by the way, in Australia it's not true to say that a car loan is always secured against your house. It can be secured against the car itself. https://www.finder.com.au/car-loans-for-pensioners There is a government Pension Loans Scheme for people who are of retirement age but don't get the full Australian Age Pension, so you may want to look at that: https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/pension-loans-scheme/eligibility-payment-rates

I suppose I was assuming that someone on a WHV wouldn't have a car, but that's probably a wrong assumption now I think about it.

I see on other threads that you're not coming to backpack, you're coming to be with your partner. Adelaide isn't the easiest city to find work as it's a smaller place, what kind of work do you do? Be aware that the wineries are not in Adelaide or a commutable distance from Adelaide, they're out in the country.

There are two kinds of depreciation. One is on the fabric of the building, and I think that's what you're reading on the ATO site. The other is for fixtures and fittings (sometimes called plant and equipment). Whether you can claim those is not affected by the age of the building they're in. However I just did some browsing and I see there were changes to legislation in 2017 which reduces what you can claim for. I haven't looked into it thoroughly but I'd suggest consulting a tax agent who knows the law in both the UK and Australia to ensure you maximise what you can claim. it will be worth the investment.

If that's the case then I must be a 2nd class British citizen, because I had exactly the same problems when I returned to the UK after living in Australia for thirty years. Not only could I not qualify for any loan of any sort, I was regarded as too much of a risk for a rental property - I had to pay six months rent in advance. Not only that, but I could only get the most basic bank account, with no interest payable, no overdraft facility and no credit card. And yes, I had substantial assets - as you've found in Australia, that cuts no ice at all. On investigating, I found that it would take several years before that would change. Sh!t happens when you move countries, in whichever direction. That's life. Apart from this credit issue, in what way are you being treated differently from "born here' Aussies? You're about to apply for the Australian pension, you're covered by Medicare, you've got a Seniors Card. So what if you paid $27,000 for the visa - that's going to be easily swallowed up by your Medicare costs for the rest of your life (even if you're in good health now, dying is expensive you know). That's why you're asked to pay. As an Australian taxpayer, I think it's only fair.

So you're suggesting they should just refuse to accept all applications outside the quota?