[H-GEN] Working for a USA company from my Australian

[Gavin Unsworth]

> In my case, I telecommuted for 8 months from Brisbane before I
> moved.  My company is a US company without an Australian presence.
> According to my company, they could not "employ" me until I moved to
> the US, as the law prohibits them from employing anyone who does not
> have residency status (it doesn't matter that I was not "resident",
> as the law was written before such things were commonly possible).

I've been employed by a US based organisation in the past as a non-resident
employee. I had the same employee entitlements as US employee - namely
health insurance, 401(k) and vacation/sickness. As a non-resident I had no
US tax taken from my salary. The organisation I worked for has hundreds of
non-resident employees.

Australian tax law goes like this .... if you are an Australian resident for
tax purposes then you pay Australian tax on ALL income. If you're not an
Australian resident for taxation purposes then you do not pay Australian
tax. "resident for tax purposes" and "Australian resident" are not
necessarily the same thing. This is where things get complicated.

Essentially the ATO wants you to declare ALL income and then they will
decide if you're resident for taxation purposes. If you're non-resident for
tax purposes then you must be paying tax in the country in which you earned
the income. If that country has no income tax (e.g. Saudi Arabia) then
you're liable to pay Australian tax on that income. The crux of it is that
you have to pay tax somewhere.

The exceptions are ADF or AFP incomes deemed tax free under special
arrangements ... or if you qualify as non-resident for taxation purposes AND
are employed by an overseas organisation (or sub-grantee) with a bilateral
agreement with the country in which you are working.

HTH

Gavin Unsworth