Just a quick question, if on a working holiday visa, how much do you have to earn before you pay tax?....just looked on the government website and it stipulates that you don't pay tax under earnings of 18000, does that mean that if you were to stay in a job say for 3 months and didn't make 18000, you wouldn't get taxed or would they work out what your earnings would be per annum?

Well you would pay tax at the time. The rate of tax would be worked out on the assumption that you would earn your weekly pay for the whole year.

When you put your tax return in at the end of the financial year, if it turned out that you had earned less than $18k, you'd get the tax back in a nice little lump sum.

This assumes, of course, that you are a resident for tax purposes. That is, that you've been living at the same address for six months.

The personal allowances appears to be apportionated over the tax year. This is unlike the UK system so be careful with this assumption.

You would get taxed at source and again unlike the UK system its not calculated taking into account income already earned during the year. Its the current week.

WHV holders are normally treated as non-resident for tax purposes, which means you're taxed on every dollar earned (at 32.5c for every $1 earned in the 2012-13 tax year (Jul-Jun) - look at the foreign residents tax rates on this page).

=> Which is why it makes sense to establish what you can do to reasonably assert tax residency in Australia and to plan your itinerary in Australia accordingly if you want to secure a tax repayment ...

There is clearly a trade off between working and travelling across Australia, and improving your tax position.

Best regards.