A boarding pass is not a tax event. Everything you built up while working in Australia sits with the ATO after you fly out: a return for every financial year you earned income in, a super balance nobody claims on your behalf, an ABN that stays registered until you cancel it.
What is still outstanding once you have gone?
Four things, independent of each other, so doing one does not clear the others. The final return has to be lodged, the superannuation claimed, any ABN cancelled, and the ATO needs contact details that still reach you.
- Lodge a return for every Australian financial year in which you earned income
- Claim your super through the Departing Australia Superannuation Payment
- Cancel any ABN you registered as a sole trader
- Keep an email address and a bank account that still work
The ATO holds your income records from every employer regardless of where you are, so a year that goes unlodged does not go unnoticed. It sits open.
How does lodging from overseas actually work?
The same return, prepared the same way, from a different postcode. Income statements come from ATO systems rather than from your former employers, which matters because chasing a Queensland packing shed for paperwork from Berlin is not a realistic plan.
The standard deadline is 31 October following the end of the financial year. Returns lodged through a registered agent generally carry an extended deadline into the following May. Our guide to lodging from overseas covers the mechanics.
When can you claim your super?
The DASP claim opens once two conditions are both met: your visa has ceased to be in effect, and you have left Australia. Not one or the other. Leaving while the visa is still live means waiting for it to expire or be cancelled before the claim can proceed.
The payment is withheld at 65% for working holiday maker contributions, so a $10,000 balance pays out about $3,500. Approval commonly takes around 28 days once the application is complete, and the net amount can be paid to an Australian or an overseas account depending on the fund. Our superannuation guide covers the process and the documents.
What happens if you leave the super sitting there?
If a fund has not heard from you for six months after you have left and your visa has expired, it transfers the balance to the ATO as unclaimed super. The money is still yours, but the claim becomes an ATO claim rather than a fund claim, with different paperwork.
What genuinely costs people money is having several funds and claiming from only the one they remember. Four employers across a year often means more than one fund, each holding a separate balance that needs a separate claim. Our guide to finding lost super covers tracing them.
Can you lodge before 30 June if you are leaving for good?
Yes, and almost nobody knows about it. Someone leaving Australia permanently part way through a financial year can lodge an early return for that part year rather than waiting until July, which brings the refund forward by months.
It is not automatically the better choice. An early return is prepared before employer reporting is finalised, so the figures have to be built from payslips rather than retrieved, and returning to Australia later in the same year means amending it. It suits a clean departure with complete records.
What decides whether this is simple or messy?
Three facts about how you left. Whether your Australian bank account is still open, because both the refund and the DASP payment pay into an account and reopening one from overseas is genuinely difficult. Whether you know every employer for the year, since a forgotten job is the usual cause of an amendment months later. And whether the visa has actually expired, which gates the super claim.
The account causes the real damage. People close everything the week before flying, which turns a straightforward refund into a months long exercise in re-establishing payment details from another continent. Keep it open for three to four months after departure, until the refund and the super have both landed.
Does it matter if you simply do not lodge?
It matters more later than it does now. An unlodged year stays on file indefinitely, and where a refund was owed it simply goes unpaid, which is the most common outcome and the quietest one.
Where tax was owed rather than refunded, interest accrues and the debt follows the tax file rather than the person, surfacing when there is a reason to look, including a future Australian visa application. Our guide to late returns and penalties covers where the penalties actually bite, which is rarely where people fear. Get in touch if you have left with a year outstanding.