NSW school fee exemption forms

[TooFastTim]

Pardon me going off at a (slight) tangent here, but if you have to pay the school fees in NSW can you claim these fees back from the taxman? Yeah I know that taxes are collected by the federal govt and fees are payable to the state, but it does strike me as immoral (double taxation for 457 visa holders) if those fees are not deductable.

[Goldie]

Pardon me going off at a (slight) tangent here, but if you have to pay the school fees in NSW can you claim these fees back from the taxman? Yeah I know that taxes are collected by the federal govt and fees are payable to the state, but it does strike me as immoral (double taxation for 457 visa holders) if those fees are not deductable.

Hi

Unfortunately they aren't tax deductable (as far as I know anyway). However, something that you might find interesting, is that you don't have to pay double tax on a 457. We found this out after a month or so of paying ridiculous tax. If you go to www.ato.gov.au and then go to tax for individuals. Where it says are you a permanent resident for tax purposes, click on there and it does an online assessment for you. At the end it tells you whether you are a permanent resident for "tax purposes". If you are, you tell your HR dept and all they do is mark the correct box on their system that does the calculations (sorry, I'm not an accountant) and you get taxed as a resident. I even phoned them to make double sure and it's all legit. It gave us about an extra $100 pw which was a huge help at the time.

The questions are things like whether you have your family here with you, are you renting/buying/living with someone, do you have most of your assets in Australia and have you lived in or intend to live in the same place for 6 months (we answered no to that at the time and still got the favourable outcome), do you belong to any clubs etc etc. Basically it's a test on how settled you are here.

Candice

[Goldie]

Sorry, the ATO site has changed. Go to the site and in the search engine type in Resides test. Clcik on the definition of resides test and near the bottom of the page there is a link "are you a resident?". That will take you to the online test.

Candice

[zorba]

To All

I see that on the "Application for Exemption" form there is a section referring tot the "Temporary Residents Program Application" for which one seemingly have to pay $110 AUD per child.

Can anyone shed some light on this. Did anyone of you that applied for the Exemption of School fees of $4500 pay this $110 per child.

Regards

Burger

Hi, the $110 is for the application to enrol in a NSW government school and is completely seperate from fees. If you transfer from one school to another within NSW you won't pay this again.

zorba

[TooFastTim]

Thanks Candice. I did find it before I looked at your follow up post

Unfortunately reading thru' previous posts in this thread there is no way I will qualify for the exemption. Looking at the situation having to pay those fees will up my effective tax rate from 28% to 36%

[Katerina]

Thanks for this useful post. A question.... does the fee of 110 dollars per child need to accompany each application?? Or only in some instances? We are on a 457 temp work visa.

Thanks

Cathy

[karenlee]

Mosts of these posts refer to 457 visa holders living in NSW. We are in WA. My daughter has applied for "Remaining Relative Visa" (Onshore) and is on a Bridging Visa A till her visa is processed. Processing time for her visa is 14 years (yes, this read this correclty, 14 years) She has a 2 1/2 year old child and has started looking into schooling to find out that she has to pay International Student fees until her visa is granted.

She is a single Mom, working full time, and at present is paying 1/2 her weekly salary on day care fees, despite earning a decent salary. She is basically being supported by me because of this. She will be almost 40, and still reliant on me if we cannot get her an exemption on these fees. There doesn't seem to be any way of applying for exemption in WA.

HELP