The rate does not change. A second or third year 417 or 462 visa is still taxed at working holiday maker rates, 15% on the first $45,000.
Why does the rate stay the same when everything else has changed?
Because the rate attaches to the visa subclass rather than to time served. A third year on a 417 is taxed identically to the first week of the first year, and 30% applies above $45,000 up to $135,000 on every visa year. Our guide to the backpacker tax rate sets out the full structure.
What people get wrong is assuming the rest of the return is a copy of last year's. In several specific places it is not.
Where does residency genuinely start to shift?
In a second or third year, quietly and with no obvious moment where it happens. Tax residency is not settled by your visa; it depends on your circumstances and has to be properly reviewed. A longer stay is exactly the kind of year where the judgement can land either way, and two multi year backpackers whose years look identical from the outside can be correctly assessed on opposite sides of the line.
If residency is established, what the finding is worth varies from person to person and is assessed case by case. The area has been fought to the High Court in Addy v Commissioner of Taxation, which measures how far from obvious the answers are.
None of it is automatic. Our guide to tax residency for working holiday makers covers why it has to be assessed rather than assumed.
Do you need a new TFN?
No. A TFN is issued once and is permanent, following you across visas, years and a departure and return. Applying again creates a duplicate record rather than a second number, and duplicates cause the identity mismatches that delay refunds.
If you cannot find the old one, recovering it is a different process from applying for a new one, and it is the right process. Our guide to whether you need a new TFN on a second visa covers it.
What happens to super across visa years?
It stays where it is, and the timing of the DASP claim becomes the decision. Super can only be claimed once your visa has ceased and you have left, so a first year balance accumulates alongside the second year's contributions and is claimed together at the end.
If you claimed DASP after your first visa and then returned on a second, that money is gone at 65% withholding and contributions start fresh. Nobody can undo it, and it is the most expensive avoidable decision here for someone who intended to come back.
Multiple visa years also mean multiple funds, because each new employer defaults you into their own unless you nominate. Consolidating is covered in our guide to super across multiple funds.
What do the 88 and 179 day requirements do to your tax records?
They are immigration requirements rather than tax ones, but they generate the tax records your next visa application is evidenced with. Eighty eight days of specified work in a regional area qualifies you for a second year visa, and a further 179 days during the second year qualifies you for a third.
Every regional employer needs your TFN on file, reports your income to the ATO under Single Touch Payroll, and produces payslips that evidence the days worked. Regional work is also where employers are most likely to be unregistered as working holiday maker employers or to engage people on ABNs, so it is where withholding errors concentrate.
What does a multi year backpacker end up carrying?
More returns than they expect. Because the financial year runs 1 July to 30 June, a two or three year stay usually produces three or four returns rather than one per visa, each with its own income, residency question and refund.
The people who leave with clean records collect their final refund and DASP without much friction. The ones carrying an unlodged year from two summers ago, four super accounts and an ATO address that is a hostel in Cairns spend months on it from the other side of the world.
What is different about your second year?
The rate is fixed across visa years. Almost everything else about a second or third year return is decided by facts specific to you.
- Whether your residency position deserves a fresh look, which after a longer stay it usually does.
- What a residency finding would be worth in your particular case, which varies more than people expect.
- Whether any earlier financial year was left unlodged, which is still recoverable.
- Whether you claimed DASP between visas, which cannot be reversed.
- How many super funds now hold contributions in your name.
- Whether any period ran on an ABN, since that income is assessed with no withholding behind it.
- Whether the ATO holds a current address and an open Australian bank account for you.
Each year is worked out separately in the working holiday tax return, and you can estimate your tax refund for each of them.