[paranoidrobot]

It's the residency rules that matter here.

For an Australia, you pay income tax if you're a resident for taxation purposes. For an Australian Citizen to answer that they're not a resident for taxation purposes is complicated and depends in part on the type of Visa you have.

Last I looked, for me, as an Australian citizen, to not have to pay tax would mean getting a permanent Visa in another country and being resident in that country. They specifically excluded time-limited visas, even if you can get them renewed automatically.

It means travelling around the world, even for years at a time, I still need to account for my income and lodge tax returns in Australia. The one upside is getting credit for income taxes paid in another country.

I believe a similar situation also applies to Canadian citizens, as a few former Canadian colleagues in Australia had to go through a whole process of getting their Australian taxation recognised in Canada.

[sk0g]

Do you mean if you pay, say, 20% tax in Switzerland as an Australian, never setting foot in Australia for an income year. Then you lodge tax in Australia and the ATO says you only have tax credits for 20% of your income, meanwhile you'd be paying 32% of your income as tax - you would then have to pay ATO the 12% difference out of pocket?

Do you have any links to information regarding Australian citizens being taxed abroad? I know for HECS, etc you're still meant to lodge and pay those amounts, but didn't realise it might be a fair bit worse than that!

[paranoidrobot]

It's complicated, but assuming that the ATO thought you were a resident for taxation purposes, then yes you still lodge a tax return in Australia, claim the tax paid in Switzerland as a credit (assuming it's recognised) and pay whatever gap there is.

It's made more difficult because tax years don't align, so it needs to be worked out that way too. Oh, and because Switzerland probably put their tax records in Swiss-Fench/Swiss-German all your documents would need to be formally translated.

I'd start by checking put the ATO site they had a bunch of tests for your residency there.

[EE84M3i]

>They specifically excluded time-limited visas

Even if the time-limit is years at a time?

[paranoidrobot]

Yep. Because you're not a permanent resident of that country.

[EE84M3i]

Wow! that's interesting. That significantly changes my view on the take that "only the US taxes overseas citizens" that I've heard quite a lot.