You landed with a plan.
Nobody mentioned the tax.
Working holiday tax is the only thing we do. If you recognise the year below, there is probably money still sitting in Australia with your name on it.
A real person replies, usually within about an hour during business hours.
What does a working holiday year look like to us?
Five things happen to almost everybody on a 417 or a 462, and four of them cost money that can usually be recovered afterwards.
Week one
You arrived with a plan that covered about a fortnight
A hostel, a SIM, a bank account and a job as soon as possible. A tax file number was somewhere on that list. Nobody explained the Australian tax year.
Your first payslips
The first job started before the number came through
Without a tax file number on file, an employer must withhold at the top rate rather than the fifteen percent a working holiday maker normally pays, so those first weeks are missing close to half.
That money does not come back by itself.
By Christmas
Four employers, half of them casual, none of them explaining anything
A hostel job, a cafe, a warehouse for three weeks, something you left without a final payslip. The Australian tax year ends in June, not December.
Losing the payslips does not matter: everything your employers reported is visible to us through the ATO.
The 88 days
If you did them, you drove a long way to do them
Somewhere west, or north, or three hours past a town you had never heard of.
Accommodation came out of your wages before you saw them, the pay slips looked different from the city ones, and it is the part of the year people are least confident about.
The flight home
You left, and the money stayed
Superannuation can only be claimed once you have left Australia and the visa has lapsed, so yours is still sitting with a fund you may not remember choosing. The over withheld tax from those first weeks is still sitting with the ATO.
Why do we only work with working holiday makers?
Every client we have is on a 417 or a 462, so the things that decide your refund are not unusual cases we have to go and read about. They are what we do all day.
A general accountant meets a backpacker a few times a year, in July, between two hundred ordinary returns.
The 417 and 462 rate schedule, the residency position that has to be properly reviewed rather than assumed, the Medicare levy exemption that depends on which passport you hold, a superannuation claim filed from a bedroom in Manchester or Osaka eleven months after you left: for us that is a Tuesday.
Anyone can press submit. The work happens before that: going through your year, working out what is true about it rather than what is quickest to tick, and then lodging it.
If your refund is less than our fee, we refund the difference, so you are never out of pocket.
Not every working holiday year produces a refund, and we will tell you if yours is unlikely to.
How do you get hold of us?
WhatsApp. Not a bot, not a ticket number, not a form that promises five to seven business days. You can ask a single question and leave it there.
You need no myGov account, no Australian ID and no payslips to start, whether you are still in Australia or have been home for two years. The contact page covers what language the answer comes back in and what happens next.
Message us on WhatsApp →Questions people ask before they message
Anything else, ask it on WhatsApp. It is quicker than reading.
Working holiday makers, and nobody else. Every client we have is in Australia on a 417 or a 462 visa, or was and has since gone home. We do not take on Australian residents, students, sponsored workers or businesses.
Yes, and a large share of our work is exactly that. Superannuation can only be claimed after you have left and your visa has lapsed, and a finished year can be lodged from anywhere, so everything is handled remotely.
No. What your employers withheld and reported is visible to us through the ATO, so we work from that record rather than paperwork from a job you left eight months ago. If something you tell us does not match what an employer reported, we deal with the difference.
If your refund is less than our fee, we refund the difference, so you are never out of pocket. Not every working holiday year produces one, and we would rather tell you early than take the work on and hope.
Whenever you are ready
Tell us about your year
Where you worked, roughly when, and whether you have left. That is enough for us to tell you what is worth chasing.
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