If your TFN has not arrived after 28 days, the cause is almost always an address the letter could not reach, details that do not match immigration records, or a duplicate application. The ATO's 28 days run from when it received the application, so check that first.
Has 28 days actually passed?
The processing window runs from the date the ATO received your application, not from when you decided to apply and not from your arrival in Australia. Online applications are normally received the same day, so the confirmation email settles it.
Under 28 days, there is nothing to escalate. Regional and remote postal delivery runs longer than metropolitan, so a station address in the Kimberley or a farm outside Renmark is a different proposition from inner Sydney.
Why is the address the first thing to check?
Your TFN is a physical letter and nothing else. There is no email delivery, no SMS and no online copy to download, so an address the letter cannot reach is a total failure. This is the most common cause of a TFN that never turns up.
The failures are mundane. A postcode digit transposed. A hostel where mail for former guests goes into a box nobody empties. An address you gave in your first week and left in your third. If you have moved since applying, contact the old address before contacting anyone else.
What else puts an application into review?
A mismatch between your application and the records the Department of Home Affairs holds. A passport number entered with a slip, a name that appears in a different order on your visa grant than in your passport, or a middle name included in one place and omitted in the other are each enough to stop automatic processing.
The third cause is a previous TFN. A Tax File Number is issued once and kept for life, so an applicant who held one on an earlier student or working holiday visa already has a number, and a new application conflicts with it rather than replacing it. If you have been in Australia before on any visa with work rights, assume the task is retrieving it.
Why should you not apply a second time?
Because it is the most reliable way to make a three week delay into a two month one. A duplicate creates a conflicting record that has to be resolved manually before either application can proceed, and manual resolution is slower than the queue you were already in.
It is the mistake we see most often, and the one action that reliably makes things worse.
How do you get a stalled application moving?
Past day 28 it becomes a phone call. The ATO can be reached on 13 28 61 during Australian business hours, or on +61 2 6216 1111 from outside Australia, and you need your passport and the reference number from your confirmation email.
What you are asking is narrow: has the TFN been issued, and to what address. If it was issued and the letter went astray, the address on record is corrected and it is re-sent. If it was never issued, you find out what is holding it. A tax agent can make that call on your behalf, which saves you the hold time and an identity verification built around documents an Australian resident has and a backpacker three weeks off the plane often does not.
Can you keep working while it is unresolved?
Yes. The delay does not affect your right to work, and it does not have to affect your pay rate. Your employer keeps you on the working holiday maker rate of 15% through the 28 day employment window if the Tax File Number Declaration records that your application is in progress, and the confirmation email is your evidence.
If your own 28 day employment window is about to lapse while the ATO application is still open, tell payroll plainly. Some employers will hold the rate on the strength of the ATO correspondence. Others apply 45% because that is what the rule says, and the excess comes back through your working holiday tax return.
Which cause is behind your delay?
A delay past 28 days is almost always something specific rather than a queue, and the cause determines whether the fix is a phone call or simply waiting.
- Whether you have held an Australian TFN before, on any visa. If so this is a retrieval, and applying again is what is blocking it.
- Whether the address you gave still holds your mail. Harvest and hospitality work moves people faster than the post moves letters.
- Whether your passport details match the visa grant exactly, including name order and middle names.
- Whether a second application exists. If it does, that is very likely the whole problem.
- Whether you are working during the delay, and whether the declaration records the application.
If a stretch of pays has already run at 45%, none of it is lost, and you can estimate your tax refund to see what the year looks like once it is reconciled.