Short term contract work in Australia

[speling bee]

I may have some short term contract work in Australia coming up.

The proposed business model is:

I have my own Ltd
My Ltd contracts with UK consultancy
UK's consultancy charges their Australian branch
Australian branch contracts with end client

The consultancy is confident they can facilitate visas and I have agreed a daily rate + expenses.

Does anyone know whether there are any tax implications (or other obstacles) in Australia of my working via my Ltd for short stretches (2 or 3 weeks at a time in Oz)? Or is this not an acceptable way of working to the Australian authorities?

Cheers

[rambaugh]

There are residency tests and UK-Australia double taxation treaties that deal with this.

It is likely the residency rules apply to a company as they would to a person. One could infer that the taxation rules for your UK limited company would depend on where your limited company is effectively being management from, so if you're operating and invoicing for work from inside Australia then it will most likely be subject to Australian corporation tax / GST. Double taxation treaties are complex and grey areas so its probably best to get some advise from a tax professional experienced in the area.

[jamesbrown]

Not sure how this would work in practice. I don't know about the Australian visa system specifically but the general rule is that work visas are employment based. What sort of visa are they hoping to arrange for you? Based on your description, you'll remain UK resident for tax purposes, but you (and your company) may also be resident for tax purposes in Australia.

Here's a link on CUK (albeit a little outdated now):

IT Contracting in Australia - Money & Tax :: Contractor UK

[barely_pointless]

Hmm, I came to Oz on a 457 some years ago on contract, the link posted is about right, but I do not believe that you would be liable for australian tax if the contractual agreement is executed under UK law and you are paid by a UK agency/client/consultancy so therefore for a 3-4 week period I would not see an issue.

Longer than 28 Days may cause a tax liability and you would do well to be crystal clear with the consultancy regarding this, also regarding expenses, is accommodation provided ? where is it ? Sydney, be prepared to pay London prices for accommodation and Zurich prices for everything else.... It's not cheap.

If the service is agreed to be delivered under UK contract law, then you're invoicing etc will not and cannot be visible to the ATO for such a short period, but as I say above, large print giveth and the small print taketh away, read the payment process and the obligations you have to the client, and they to you, if they provide anything, they'll want to claim it as an expense, and thus will make you look like a nice ripe 457 cashed up contractor to the ATO. What are your oblligations under the Visa work scheme, are they going to want you to provide an Tax file number ? in which case it may be that they want to recover first and refund later......