The changes to LAFHA policy would have affected me very dramatically had my employer not given me a large raise to cover the difference. It completely boggles my mind that while I was paying the same tax as an Australian citizen, I had to pay out-of-pocket for my daughter's education (this was a NSW thing but is slowly spreading to other states). The mediocre local public school was $5k per child, so I spent $10k instead and sent her to a great private school.

It is clear to me that the Australian government is only interested in soaking foreign workers for as much as they could get away with. They clearly are not interested in anything other than digging stuff up out of the ground and selling it.

The best schools in Sydney are the public schools... Went to one of the best public high schools in Sydney. My parents paid $400. At least you're not paying $20k USD/year in SF.

Your comments re tax can be applied to any country in the world (citizens vs residents/temporary residents). The US even has an exit tax on Green Card holders.

You can apply for a withholding exemption.

The local middle school in my suburb was mediocre (north of Hornsby). I'm sure there are others that are much better. (One of) the final straws was when her math teacher gave her a calculator when she continued to ask for help with math. The other was when the principal embarrassed her in front of the entire school assembly because of an technical issue with her uniform.

At the time, I couldn't find any information on withholding exceptions for Medicare tax. It worked out in the end though because we got a large refund for the un-refunded amount as we prepared to leave the country.

We loved our time in Australia, so please don't construe my comments as disparaging the country in general. It was a sad day as we flew away to the US.

Here is the fee schedule: http://www.detinternational.nsw.edu.au/media-assets/trp/fees...

If you choose to then apply for a PR, you're eligible for a partial refund based on your PR grant date.

- Flat rental applications contain 2 years of tax return forms, 3 months of salary proof, for yourself and for a third person (or bank) who will guarantee you.

- As a self employed there are 18 different organizations to whom I must lodge contributions: VAT, retirement, retirement 2, training, universal income, disability, elderness 1, elderness 2, elderness 3, illness, health insurance, health insurance 2, workplace safety, help for housing, help for various institutions who went bankrupt, Commerce chamber, CSG, corporate tax, land tax. Employed people pay the same, plus unemployment, the employer handles half the paperwork but employees who don't cross-check are penalized.

- Each of them have an application form and half of them are monthly. Most of them apply on weird rules ("7.23% on 98.5% of revenue within limit of 1200 PASS if the revenue is ... and 1400 PASS if ..."). Some of them are taken, but don't give you benefits because you don't fit the rules (as you talked about pumping money from workers). Some are taken and refunded later.

- There are lunch tickets and holiday grants, for about 200€ per month, your employer must fund the employee bureau for this, but you need to apply to get them granted. Most usually you'll have to lodge an application for that, with your tax return and salary sheet, and you'll have fewer benefits if you don't have children. For example you'll be offered a rebate on a house rental for 5 people, which exactly fits the family of the employee managing the appcations.

- If you were a foreigner, you would also have to file for a visa and work permit, which means in average 0,5 day per trimester queuing in person at the Prefecture for various reasons.

- our landlord wanted to see a tax return from the previous year and three months' bank statements. No guarantee required. Our tenancy is for three years, before which the landlord cannot terminate it, but we can with 3 months' notice at any time. Renting was easy and cheap, and comes with a great deal of security.

- our new bank wanted a LOT of information about us, and some 70 pages of documentation. But now it's set up I can email or phone them and get an instant response from someone that knows me and my family (and speaks fluent English to boot). Their online systems are considerably better than my previous UK bank's.

- Registering for self-employment was entirely online and took 20 minutes.

- I fill out a social security return quarterly, which takes ~45 seconds, and all of the calculations are handled for me.

- We pay more tax than in the UK. But the state also pays for 85% of our childcare costs, and credits half of the remainder against our income tax bill.

- When I needed to check on our residence tax status, I rolled up at our local tax office where I was seen within 2 minutes by a friendly official who had immediately called all our details up on his computer, showed me what I needed to know and told me everything was in hand. (It was.)

It's not perfect. Being an employer is seriously not fun. Self-employment has its issues too. But it seems to be getting better, and by and large the systems work. (Probably because there are huge numbers of people running them.)

One example out of blue - when you have a property (probably not your primary residence) and somebody breaks in and starts squatting in it, you cannot just drive them out without providing another accommodation for them. You go to courts, fight for months, and then maybe you're lucky and get your property back.

It's a system that looks social & fair from outside, but as everywhere else, rich gets richer, poor stay poor and are just thrown some bread crumbs to not complain too much.

The best option for a rising tech company in Australia remains, unfortunately, to purchase outright a flailing listed mining company and invert, a la 1999. This is where the "scammy" feel of listed tech companies comes from.

Perhaps ironically, when I was in Australia a few weeks back, every merchant assumed my credit card supported NFC.

They got a kick out of my explanation that American credit cards just finally caught up with Smart Chips, and now Australia has moved on.

BTW, any issues or threats by your US bank to close your account because your are living abroad? It's going around.

I want to buy from www.lastseason.co.nz without getting stung.

Edit: BankWest in Australia has a no-conversion-fee Mastercard.

I used Tranferz a few times when I moved from Aus to the US. Free for over $5000 last time I checked.

http://www.tranzfers.com/Referral/matthodge

We're constantly blocked from access to great online content and we can't order products from the US without great expense. But the moment I step foot on US soil and try to buy something, I feel like I'm in the credit card dark ages.

It's funny, we have all these NFC credit card terminals, but Apple Pay still hasn't launched here.

I mean, "it can do the same thing your free debit card could two years ago" is kind of a weak marketing pitch, so maybe that's why they're not prioritizing it...

No PIN, tap and go, no batteries.

With little user benefit, I'm assuming banks are reluctant to sign on to give apple a cut.

My old Amex Blue supported NFC 4-5 years ago, which was super rad. None of my current cards, however do.

If you are an iPhone user, and many folks happen to own iphones, that would be the reason.

[1] Well, the tech will be supported. Whether the business will accept amex or not is another story...

And then there are regressive forces like the last PM, who gutted science funding in permanently damaging ways.

It's a complex picture, but I think it's unfair to say Australians shy away from tech. Tech startups are harder here because of both government red tape and small market size, but that doesn't mean there's no real appetite for tech here. And frankly, given how much people here on HN say employee options are worthless, it's not the Australian regulations on options that would be holding anything back.

My one positive is things today are nowhere near as bad as they were 15 years ago when I started. We have a great base of talent and with a little government support I could see Australian’s getting over their cringe.

Yes, the internet here is expensive and slow. You can thank the current government for it's intentional blocking of better infrastructure there. But just because the internet is comparatively slow here doesn't mean that the country is a backwater overall. The internet in the US is amazingly fast... if you're in the right spot. It's fucking awful if you're in a bad spot. Yet we don't paint the US as a technological backwater.

sorry, can you explain this further? i don't know much about australia but this seems strange for a 'western' country, especially one in the british commonwealth.

Australia's wealth is from its natural resources. Originally farming, then gold, coal, oil, and uranium. Britain has some natural resources in the North sea, but London has been a centre of intellectual wealth for hundreds of years: before there were startups, there were the Rothschild's, banks, and every other kind of trader. Man Group started the first hedge fund in the world in London 200 years ago based on storms affecting the sugercane crop for their Royal Navy rum contract. Australia is still at the selling sugarcane stage.

So while the UK is a little more cynical than the US, it still appreciates the value can be created intellectually because it has that history. Australia doesn't, because money is made by digging things up and selling them. I met and worked with some incredibly talented technical people in Oz - Damien from BSD/ipfw, Skud from Perl, lots of SA folk from Usenix - but the general business community is very wary of tech.

There are key difference b/w the US, UK and Aus (native speaker here) with respect to business. I perceive the US as risk-takers with access to deregulated finance. The UK is risk-adverse with sophisticated finance. In Aus we have a combination of risk aversion and what I'll term, "dumb-money".

1. http://www.tillett.info/2015/06/24/why-i-kept-my-startup-in-...

I think a bigger issue is the ludicrous rents. We are paying SF/NYC/London rents, but wages for developers are not anywhere near the level they are in these cities. We do have very nice beaches and fantastic weather - today is just perfect in Sydney.

I actually think we are paying more in rent than the cities mentioned. The only place where I can think of higher rent is in SF.

Imagine working in Security. 'Yes, this costs money and will bring in zero revenue for your company...'