For most working holiday makers, the passport that carries the visa is the whole document requirement. Nothing is uploaded.
What does the application actually ask for?
Identity details rather than evidence. Your full legal name exactly as printed on the passport, date of birth, country of citizenship and country of birth, the passport that carries your current 417 or 462 visa, your date of arrival on that visa, an Australian residential address, and contact details.
There is no officer reading your visa grant notice, only an automated match that either succeeds or does not. That is why a trivial looking detail can stop the application.
Which passport, if you hold more than one?
The one you entered Australia on and the one the visa was granted against. Dual nationals routinely apply with the passport they think of as their main one and match against nothing, because the immigration record sits on the other document.
The same trap catches anyone who renewed a passport after the visa was granted. The new booklet has a new number, the visa record carries the old one, and the match fails on a document in your hand.
What address should you give?
Somewhere mail will reliably reach you in a month, because the TFN arrives as a physical letter and a returned letter restarts the wait. A rental or share house, a friend or relative, a hostel where you have permission to receive mail, or a workplace with the employer's agreement all work.
A hostel you are leaving in ten days does not, and that is the most common self inflicted delay in the process. Our guide to updating your address with the ATO covers what to do if you move before the letter arrives.
What happens with names that are not simple?
They are the leading cause of rejection, and the reason is mechanical. Hyphens, apostrophes, accented characters, multiple middle names, transliterated names and married names all create differences between how a name is printed, how it was recorded at the visa stage, and how a person types it.
If the passport reads Francois with a cedilla and Muller with an umlaut, the unaccented forms are a mismatch to a system comparing strings. So is dropping a middle name that appears on the visa grant. Enter it character for character as printed.
When does the ATO ask for more?
When the automated match fails. The ATO may then ask for certified copies or for in person identity verification at a service centre.
That path is slow, particularly from overseas, which is the argument for applying early in your stay rather than later.
What does a delay actually cost?
Thirty cents in every dollar you earn in the meantime. Without a TFN on file the employer withholds 45% instead of 15%, which on a $1,000 week is $300 held back, and it continues until the number is recorded.
The 28 day declaration window is the mitigation. Telling your employer the application is in progress, recorded on the Tax File Number Declaration, keeps you on the working holiday rate through the window. Everything over withheld is recovered at assessment, so the cost is timing rather than amount.
What should you do with the number once it arrives?
Give it to every employer separately, then protect it. Working holiday makers are targeted for TFN theft, because a stolen TFN allows a fraudulent return to be lodged with the refund sent elsewhere, and the victim usually finds out when their own return is rejected as a duplicate.
Never send a TFN, passport or visa grant to anyone who cannot show a current registration on the government's public register of tax practitioners. People presenting themselves as accountants in backpacker groups are a recurring problem, and a verifiable registration number is the whole test.
Will yours clear on the first try?
The documents are the same for everyone. Whether it clears first time depends on details specific to you, and each point below is a common and avoidable failure.
- Whether the passport you apply with is the one the visa was granted against.
- Whether that passport has been renewed since the visa was granted.
- Whether your name contains characters or middle names that were recorded differently at any stage.
- Whether your arrival has been recorded, which it may not be if you apply within hours of landing.
- Whether the postal address will still be yours in a month.
- Whether you have held a TFN before, in which case recovery rather than a fresh application is correct.
Anything over withheld during the wait comes back through the working holiday tax return, and you can estimate your tax refund once you know how long the period ran.