palerider

Hi Guys,

Got myself in a right muddle at the moment:

been offered a job in Sydney for $75k inlusive of supperannuation so effectively $68k ish

also been told i will be elligible for LAFHA.

I have a wife and three nippers. (so this affects the total allowance i would imagine)

Can anyone tell me what my likely take home pay would be each week as i'm not sure how the Lafha works, i.e. is it an increase in tax free allowance or is it just added to your take home pay tax free. Obviously there is a big difference between getting the full allowance or just not being taxed on a part of your wages.

If anyone could let me know what i would likely take home each week i would be eternally grateful and maybe all my hair will grow back before i decide whether to take the job or not.

Oh and i have to decide by the end of this week as well (so tonight basically GULP!)

JAJ

What kind of visa are they going to sponsor you for? Temporary or permanent?

If temporary then you might get LAHFA (it's a grey area) but be prepared for lots of nasty surprises - eg, in NSW you will pay A$4500 per year to send your children to a government school because you're not a permanent resident.

This will give you an idea of some of the other issues 457 visa holders face:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=357804

I would also be concerned about such a short deadline to decide, it's not that usual for good employers to insist on an almost immediate decision.

palerider

yeah it's a 457 visa,

The school fees will be paid for by the company and i have had almost to weeks to decide......

carrot

We have just been going through exactly the same thing ourselves, but luckily my OH's HR dept have been very helpful and gave us a clear breakdown of how it works (but not before we spent days trying to figure how it works and messing around with tax calculators etc).

It is my understanding that LAFHA is a tax-free allowance so you will not pay income tax, super or medicare levy on it. Under 457 regulations there is a min. taxable base salary that you have to have (based on a 38hr wk so if you work longer hours your base is higher) of $41850.
LAFHA is made up of a food and a housing component. For a family, the food component is around $12000 (figures on Australian Tax Office ATO website).

So on a package of 75k it would theoretically work as follows:
Base salary: $41850
Super: 9% of base salary so around $4000
LAFHA food: $12000 (tax free)
LAFHA accommodation: up to £17000 or thereabouts (tax free) depending on how much your rent is - f your rent is less than $17k a year, you will only get what your rent is.
Altogether, this should total 75k or thereabouts

From there, you can go on to the ATO website and do a simple tax calculator to work out how much tax you pay on your base salary and subtract this, take off another 1% of base for medicare, add on the tax free allowances, and you will have your annual take home salary - if this makes sense!

Note though what your working hours will be. My OH is contracted for 45 hrs per wk so his base salary is a lot higher, closer to 50k in fact. After base and super, we have been advised we will be left with around £18000 LAFHA and that's on a salary just slightly less than yours. From what I can gather, LAFHA is at the employer's discretion but they don't like to give people absolutely huge allowances as it raises eyebrows with the Australian Tax Office and there are sometimes fringe benefits tax implications for the company. As a general guess though, a salary of 75k LAFHA is probably equivalent to around 85/90k on full tax (you could play around with figures on the tax calculator on the ATO website if you really wanted to work it out)

What we did is emailed OH's new employer with our assumption of how much the base, super, and LAFHA was, and they emailed back with the correct figures, so maybe you could try that. At least then you will be able to make a realistic decision.

I hope this all makes sense. This is my first post (we are off to Melbourne in autumn) as I have always found most information I need by searching previous posts, but I know there is so much unknown about LAFHA so hope this helps other people out too.

h2oskineil

Hi
What visa are you on??? I understand you will have to pay school fees in NSW on a 457!

Neil.