The federal government is facing growing calls to scrap or overhaul controversial changes to capital gains tax (CGT) exemptions for Australian expats, but tax watchers say now is the time to plan ahead and avoid getting slugged. 

Set to  affect about 100,000 Australians living and working overseas, the changes would deny CGT exemptions for homes sold while the owner was outside Australia, a retrospective slug as far back a...

When You Don't Have a Pair of Magical Ruby Slippers Like Dorothy

Current US tax laws do not provide any definitive guidance on the US tax classification and treatment of hybrid foreign retirement plans such as an Australian Superannuation Fund (“ASF”). In June 2015, the IRS issued a series of Private Letter Rulings (“PLRs”) to individual taxpayers holding that beneficial interests in foreign superannuation funds would be classi...

Because of its progressive ideals, democratic society, and focus on aesthetics, Denmark is a country that many Australians want to relocate to.

However, as with any location, moving to this Scandinavian country is not as simple as buying a plane ticket. There is a lot of important information that you must first know in order to make settling down in this country an easy and hassle-free process.

If you are considering residing i...

Given that self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) enjoy substantial tax concessions, it comes as no surprise that the Australian Taxation Office wants to ensure trustees play by the rules and don't take advantage of the system.

Hence the existence of independent SMSF auditors, whose role is to check compliance and maintain the integrity of the SMSF sector through yearly audits.

From July 1, 2019, this will change for eligible...

• Expats say the average time to find work after returning to Australia was 10 weeks.

• A third (33%) of returning expats surveyed said it was difficult to find a suitable role while one fifth (19%) said they accepted a lower level role.

• Half (54%) of survey respondents said their main reason for working overseas was to experience another culture. This contrasts with only 21% who say they sought work overseas to spec...

New research has revealed that more pension money is being sent across the ditch, from Australia to New Zealand, than to any other country around the world.

The study was carried out by foreign exchange provider WorldFirst and revealed that almost one fifth of all pension-type transfers that were made in Australia last year, made their way across the Tasman Sea.

WorldFirst analysed thousands of its customers pension transfers be...

ING Australia, a division of the global financial giant, is slamming the door shut on expatriate Australians needing finance to buy property here, the second major international bank to cut credit to local borrowers in a week.

The Dutch bank will announce that from Monday none of the estimated 1 million Australians living overseas will be "considered eligible borrowers", despite strong demand from rich expatriates.

It follo...

Baby boomers in Australia, the UK, the US and other Western nations are in a pickle. They're often cash-poor and living in a country with a high standard of living and prices to match. For some, retiring overseas is an option, but it pays to do your homework.

Deep in the mountainous interior of northern Thailand, by an ancient temple with an enormous carved buddha, a group assembles just after dawn for an unusual ritual. This i...

Cashed-up expatriates are making the most of the falling Australian dollar and weakening property prices to snap up trophy properties in prestige postcodes costing upwards of $5 million.

Buyer's agents advising overseas clients claim the dollar pushing below 75¢ to the US dollar is fuelling much interest among the Australian expat communities of Singapore and Hong Kong, where the dollar is pegged to the greenback.

Many...

For Americans living in Australia, the countdown has begun to take advantage of a US Internal Revenue Service program that offers partial amnesty for those who have neglected to file taxes stateside.

Last month, the IRS announced that it will begin to wind down the 2014 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, which allows for US taxpayers with assets out of the country to avoid criminal prosecution for not reporting foreign acco...

Here’s something you might not expect to hear a financial planner say: maybe repaying your debt is the last thing you should do.

We should explain. Not all debt is equal. Financial planners divide debt into two broad types: deductible and non-deductible. As these names suggest, deductible debt lets you claim a tax deduction for the interest that you pay. Non-deductible debt does not. This means that you have to pay the int...

Australian expatriates are lobbying Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to overturn proposed tax changes that will force them to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital gains tax if they sell their family home while working overseas.

A powerful lobby of Australian business and education interests in Asia this week warned the move was already making it harder to recruit staff and would damage Australia's people-to-people eng...

And Australians still like them

“THE prime reason for the decline in living standards for many Australian workers is our staggering population growth,” thunders Dick Smith, a campaigning millionaire, in an apocalyptic manifesto. He is right about the staggering growth. The number of children the average Australian woman has fell below two in the 1970s and has stayed there. Yet since then Australia’s population has grown by 70%,...

With Easter out of the way, we enter the federal budget preview season. Between now and when Treasurer Scott Morrison stands up in Parliament House on the night of Tuesday, May 8, to deliver his speech, there will be abundant clues and hints dropped by the government about its plans.

While pre-budget speculation is a part-and-parcel parlour game of modern political life, I want to consider something we know far more about: the...

Expatriate Americans with businesses in Australia are in for a nasty surprise as a result of the Trump tax plan, experts say. 

While much attention has been paid to the one-off "deemed repatriation tax" of 15.5 per cent for giants like Apple and Google, in fact any dual US citizen with retained earnings in a private business located outside America will be hit.

"If you own a private corporation, there's a one-time tax that...