Yes. A working holiday maker can hold a Tax File Number and an Australian Business Number at the same time, and you need the TFN first because it is required to register an ABN. The TFN covers employment income. The ABN covers contracting income.
What does each number actually do?
They are not interchangeable. The TFN is your identity with the ATO as a person: it sits behind your employment, your tax return, your superannuation account and your bank interest. The ABN is your identity as a business: it goes on invoices you issue, and tells a payer they are buying a service rather than employing someone.
The practical difference matters more than everything else here. Employment income arrives already taxed, because your employer withholds. ABN income arrives whole, and the tax on it is settled once, at assessment.
Is holding both normal on a working holiday visa?
Completely. A common year is ten months of hospitality or farm work through payroll under a TFN, with delivery riding, a stall, some photography or a few weeks of contracted labour invoiced under an ABN alongside it.
The seasons make it more common than people expect. A summer in Cairns waiting tables, an Uber Eats or DoorDash account on weekends, and a stretch of vintage work in the Barossa billed as a contractor is three income shapes in one financial year, all on one return.
What is the trap that catches people in October?
Nothing is withheld from ABN income during the year, so the money feels like it is all yours, and the assessment comes afterwards. The working holiday maker rates apply across your combined income, so ABN earnings stack on top of your wages rather than being taxed in isolation.
The habit that prevents it is putting aside roughly 15 to 20 cents of every ABN dollar as it comes in. The people with a problem are the ones who had a good three months and treated the gross as income.
When should you not be using an ABN?
When the work is employment. Being paid through an ABN for what is really a job strips out three things at once: no tax is withheld, no superannuation is paid for you, and no leave entitlements accrue.
The pattern to watch for is being moved from payroll onto invoicing for the same job, hours, supervisor and roster. That is sham contracting and it is unlawful. If the job looks like employment, it legally is employment regardless of the paperwork, and the employee versus contractor distinction is decided on how the work is actually done.
What are you responsible for that an employee is not?
Your own records. Your employer reports your wages to the ATO automatically through payroll, so employment income turns up on your return whether you track it or not. ABN income does not.
So keep a copy of every invoice you issue and every payment received, plus the expense records supporting what you claim against it. Watch the GST threshold too: registration becomes compulsory once turnover reaches $75,000 in a year, and from the first dollar for rideshare driving.
What does your ABN half do to the bill?
Holding both numbers is straightforward. What varies is what the ABN half does to your assessment.
- Whether your ABN work is genuinely contracting or employment wearing a different hat. This changes your super, your leave and who carries the tax.
- Whether most of your ABN income comes from a single payer. Where 80% or more comes from one source, personal services income rules can restrict what you deduct against it.
- Whether you crossed the GST threshold, or are driving rideshare, where GST applies from the first fare.
- Whether you set money aside during the year. This is the difference between an October assessment being routine and being a shock.
- Whether you had a period on wages before your TFN was on file, which puts part of the year at 45%.
Both income streams settle in the same working holiday tax return, and you can estimate your tax refund once you know roughly what each came to.