is income tax more for ex pats

[Simons]

Someone told me that ex pats pay more income tax than non ex pats .is this true?

[Andrew from Vista Financial]

Hi Simons

 

Not on the basis on them being ex-pats it isn't. Differences in tax would be based on visas and tax residency.

 

If an expat was a permanent resident and tax resident in Australia their tax liability would assessed the same way as a non-expat permanent resident/citizen and tax resident in Australia's would.

 

Regards

 

Andy

[Simons]

Ok thank you for that.

[Mike@Bonbeach]

The main problem for Pension aged ex-pats is that both the private and UK Age pension are assessed as taxable income and not all allowances that "senior Australians" get are available to ex-pat Immigrants, in particular is the Senior Australians offset which we are not eligible to claim until we have lived here 10 years. My tax accountant made the mistake in assuming that as we were above pensionable age we qualified for that offset and didn't pay any tax for 4 years until we changed accountants and the new chap discovered that we were not eligible and we then had to pay back 4 years of tax to the ATO. The accountant's company paid all the late payment fines etc but we still had to cough up quite a bit to get back on track.

Mike

PS The moral of the story is ....don't change Tax return accountants. I just wonder how long we would have gone before the ATO did a spot check.

Mike