Your address can be updated with the ATO online through its own services, by phone on 13 28 61, or by a tax agent acting for you. All three take effect on your record quickly.
Why does the ATO hold an address at all if refunds go to a bank account?
Because several things that decide whether you get paid still travel by post. Your TFN letter is posted and only posted. Identity verification correspondence is posted. Notices of assessment, amendment letters and any request for information go to the address on file, and a letter you never see is still a letter you were deemed to have received.
Refunds themselves are paid electronically to an Australian bank account in almost every case, so a stale address does not usually stop the money. It stops everything that has to happen before the money.
What actually goes wrong when the address is old?
The most expensive failure is the TFN letter, because a returned letter restarts a 28 day wait while you may be working at 45% instead of 15%.
The second is superannuation. Your fund and the ATO both hold an address for you, and a fund that cannot reach you eventually reports the account as unclaimed and transfers it to the ATO. That money is still yours and still claimable, but it is now one more step away from you at the exact moment you are leaving the country.
The third is the quiet one. An ATO letter asking a question about your return, unanswered because it went to a hostel in Byron you left in March, becomes an assessment made without your input.
Which address should you give if you are moving every few weeks?
Somewhere that will still hold your mail in four weeks, which is rarely where you are sleeping tonight. Harvest and hospitality move people faster than the post moves letters.
- A friend's or relative's permanent Australian address is the best answer, even if you never go there.
- A long stay hostel works if it genuinely holds mail for departed guests, which many do not.
- A post office box is accepted and is the most reliable option for anyone spending a season moving between farms.
- A hostel you are leaving on Friday is the worst answer, and it is the one most people give.
The ATO records a postal address and a residential address separately. If you are using a mail holding address, set the postal one to it and leave the residential one as where you actually live, because the TFN letter follows the postal address.
Does your address matter once you have left Australia?
Yes, and this is the point at which most people stop thinking about it. An overseas address can be recorded with the ATO, and it should be, because post departure correspondence is exactly the correspondence you cannot afford to miss: a refund under review, a departing Australia superannuation payment, a request to confirm your identity.
Your bank details matter as much. A refund directed to an Australian account you closed on the way to the airport does not vanish, but it bounces back and becomes a credit sitting on your ATO account until someone tells the ATO where to send it.
Is this housekeeping or urgent for you?
Updating an address is the same task for everyone, but the urgency is not.
- Whether you are still waiting on a TFN letter. If you are, this is urgent and it is the only thing on this page with a weekly cost attached.
- Whether you have superannuation with a fund that has an old address. Unreachable accounts end up transferred to the ATO as unclaimed super.
- Whether you are about to leave Australia. The address and the bank account both need to be right before you fly, not after.
- Whether you have more than one super fund from more than one employer. Each fund holds its own address, and updating the ATO does not update them.
If you are leaving with super still in Australia, the address is one of the details that decides how smoothly you claim your superannuation after leaving Australia, and you can estimate your tax refund before you lodge anything.