KhunHeineken

If you don't want to pay tax in Australia, then have nothing in Australia than can be taxed. Sell all your assets, and move all the proceeds offshore. A bank based in Singapore is a good option. You can have a credit card with an Australian finance company, as well as a pre paid or even post paid sim card, a bank account (with next to nothing in it) and a driver's license. None of these attract tax, and can be used by you either outside of Australia, or inside Australia. Obviously, you will have an Aussie passport as well.

Yep, which means most on this thread / forum will be effected. Only a matter of time before they are going to be in for a big shock. As you said, it will simply come down to how many days an expat is outside Australia, because it's the easiest to prove. Immigration know when you left Australia, and you can't dispute it, only mount a defense for the purpose of leaving, and length of time away. The "please explain" letter will target $1 as well as $1,000,000. Same letter, only the individual's net worth differs, and the return for the ATO. The ATO will not differentiate. They'll gladly take the $1 as well. I disagree. Pensions have been decreased after 6 weeks of the recipient being outside of Australia. This is proof of data bases communicating. The immigration, Centrelink, and ATO data bases talk to each other. Yep, that's domestic, and annually, around tax time. What I think will eventually happen is the data base will spit out a list of thousands of Aussies that are abroad for more than 180 days, then match that up with tax returns, or lack of them, and then contact them with a "please explain." This will particularly be the case for those with income generating assess in Australia. The days of people receiving a pension are coming to an end. Superannuation, and various deeming laws for assets have already seen to than. I am not saying the ATO will be on us next week, but it's only a matter of time before they turn their sights to lucrative and easy targets, such as Aussies not living in Australia for 180 days, but still generating income in Australia. Eg. rent, interest, dividends etc.

If / when you withdraw your super, any money earned by that lump sum, be it rent because you bought a property with it, interest from a bank or term deposit account, dividends etc will be taxed at the high non resident rate. It's not just taxes and fees involved for the withdrawal of your super, it's also what it earns in Australia after you withdraw it, unless you are moving it offshore.

Why would you need to access the MyGov website then?

The 180 day rule is more than a guide. It is one of the criteria relied upon at law for the determination of an individual's residency status for tax purposes. I travel a lot whilst outside of Australia. I attend motor racing events in Malaysia and Singapore, and follow various festivals, concerts, sporting events etc in different countries. I also visit friends in different countries around South East Asia. I make sure I have, and keep, a record of all travel. I think I could mount a good defense, should the ATO deem me a non resident, but I do agree, there's a chance I may not be successful. For those that remain in one location in Thailand, without maintaining a domicile in Australia, and ties to it, like utility bills etc, I think there would be little they could offer by way of a defense. Yes, residency has been done to death, and everyone has their own information they are relying on, and a system that is working for them. I am not saying my system is the best. I am more than happy to listen to what has been working for others. I have no doubt that the Australian government will be chasing every dollar they can in the future, and immigration data bases showing citizens outside of Australia for 180 days is an easy target, and difficult to fly under the radar with. I would suggest all Aussies expats get their ducks in a row, because it's only a matter of time before we are all contacted by the ATO for a "please explain."

I do similar to ozfarang. I maintain a "domicile" (house - property) in Australia to get around the 180 days outside of the country rule for non resident for taxation purposes. I visit Australia once a year and have a free annual medical check up on Medicare to remain active in the Medicare system. My tax agent submits a small return for me every year to remain active on the tax system. I NEVER EVER NEVER tick the box on the airport depart card that says Australian Leaving Permanently. As far as the Australian government is concerned, I just have a long overseas holiday every year, but still call Australia home. The big problem will come, and I am sure it's only a matter of time before it does come, is when the Australia government changes the law to no longer have any exemptions to the 180 days outside of Australia rule. That will mean, any Australian citizen outside of Australia for more than 180 days a year will automatically be deemed a non resident for taxation purposes. At something like $0.49 in the dollar, from dollar number one, no sliding scale, it will net the Australian government big money. When that time comes, I will either have to stay in Australia for 180 days every year, or sell up and ship out, completely, moving all funds offshore, most likely to a Singapore bank account, and leave nothing in Australia than can be taxed. I will just have an Australian passport, driver's license, sim card, bank account with $10 in it, and a Visa or Mastercard credit card or debit card. There's a lot of conflicting information about residency status among expats in Thailand, but I know one thing is for sure, you do not want to be deemed a non resident for taxation purposes, but I can see the day when the Australian government will chase money from everyone outside Australia for more than a legitimate holiday length of time.

Aldi Mobile Pay As You Go from the Aldi supermarket. $15 for 365 days validity. Uses the Telstra mobile network. Turn on international roaming. Top ups can be done online once a year with a credit card, or you can set up auto recharge. Handy when back in Australia also as the calls are cheap. https://www.aldimobile.com.au/collections/payg

I looked at cheaper models, but because I want to run it as a Plex Media Server, and Wireguard VPN, I needed a device with some CPU power. It came down to Synology DS918+ and DS920+, and even then, their processors are not fast. My research told me they use slower processors that are energy efficient, but to me, this only caters for the people leaving their NAS on 24/7. I would have liked a Core i5 or even Core i7 NAS, and then use the Wake On Lan feature for energy efficiency. I am only a home user, but I would have liked the option of having the power to transcode HD and a faster VPN when needed.

Check out Voip Buster as well. You can make free trial call to test the service. https://www.voipbuster.com/dashboard

From a quick Google. https://inspirepattaya.com/lifestyle/thaivisa-radio-1-thaivisa-radio-2-4/ There was Brooksy's morning show. Could that be it?

Some packages used to offer free access to certain social media websites. Still, hammering the video streaming for hours everyday, I'm surprised it never went over 100GB.

I find that hard to believe. What resolution was she streaming in? Is it possible she was leaching off a nearby wifi signal?

I have anti-virus on all my devices. Once question I have is, what do you do for anti-virus on a NAS? My NAS will be exposed to the internet as I wish to back up remotely.

Bumping the thread. Thanks to members that have replied to me. I will individually reply to your posts in the near future. After some research, procrastination, supply chain issues, and then waiting for a while for the next model to be released, I didn't want to wait any longer and eventually settled on a brand new, but superseded Synology DS918+. One of the main reasons I chose the superseded model is it has two accessible ram slots which makes it easier for a ram upgrade, where as the current model, the DS920+ has 4GB of ram soldered on, which means the maximum ram you can have is 12GB, not 16GB. I know using another brand of ram voids my warranty, so I will not head down that path straight away, but the option is there for the future when I start learning about adding a virtual machine etc. Also, should that soldered on ram ever die, it is unknown if the NAS will run off the other slot, or the NAS becomes a throw away. There was a lot of debate whether the processor can use 12GB or 16GB of ram, as Intel say maximum ram for that processor is 8GB. Does any member have experience with installing more ram than what Intel says their processor can utilize? Youtube clips showed the ram being used in the NAS software, but some argued the processor will only use 8GB. The processor is faster on the newer model, but I don't think I will notice it too much. It's not a business NAS. If back ups take some hours, no problem. The superseded model was only marginally cheaper than the new model, with some reports of the superseded model rising in price after the new model was released, possibly due to the soldered on ram. My research lead me to believe Synology is going down the path of forcing its customers to use their ram and their HDD's. This also was a factor in choosing the older model. It's a 4 bay NAS, and I have populated it with 3 x 4TB Ironwolf Pro drives. I'll keep a bay spare at this stage. I really liked a QNAP NAS that had just about everything you could think of, but it was considerably more expensive, and I doubt I have the knowledge or use for most of its capabilities. Does anyone own a DS918+, or a similar spec Synology? Any thoughts on my choice of NAS? Here's the data sheet. https://global.download.synology.com/download/Document/Hardware/DataSheet/DiskStation/18-year/DS918+/enu/Synology_DS918_Plus_Data_Sheet_enu.pdf

OP, I had the exact same problem as you a few years ago. It was like disappearing or shrinking C Drive, despite no new programs being added. I did a disk clean up and some other things mentioned by members on this thread, but still I had not much C Drive left. In my case, the problem was the restore point setting had changed from around 5% that I normally have it on, to the maximum, 100%. So I had a stack of restore points, many from sometime ago, taking up a lot of space. Solution for me was delete every restore point, move the slider back down to 5%, and then create a fresh restore point. When I looked at my C Drive, space was back to where it should have been. You may like to check this out. You lose no data, but of course, only delete restore points if your computer is running fine, accept for the lack of C Drive space.

Your ISP may log what sites you go to. Some of the other DNS server providers state they have a zero logging policy, or similar words. This is on the Quad 9 website. "When your devices use Quad9 normally, no data containing your IP address is ever logged in any Quad9 system."

Fortunately, I have never been the victim of a ransomware attack. If my NAS got infected with ransomware, can I format the HDD's in the NAS and reload them from a portable HDD and cloud storage?

Thanks for your post. I plan to use 3 bays of a 4 bay NAS. I'll keep a bay free for when my storage needs grow. I have seen the term docker in my research. I don't quite get it. What can you do with it? What are people using it for? What are the benefits? I will use my NAS the same way. Mainly, photos, music, documents, and Acronis back up images of my desktop and 2 laptop computers.

Speed seems to be the issue with remote access. As another member said, I would VPN back to it for security and privacy, and I could then upload my latest photos from my travels. I could upload overnight. This would not be a problem for me. Even if it was in my house, in my home country, I would basically be remote accessing anyway as I would be in another country.

Thanks for your post. I'll ask other members when they upgraded their Synology NAS, could they put their old HDD's in it without formatting and reloading? I gathered this NAS was going to last me a long time, maybe over 10 years.

You've used a term I am not familiar with. Can you briefly tell me what a Carrier Grade Nat is?

Thanks for your post. After reading your post I checked out cloud storage. I never liked the idea of handing over all of my digital life to a company. I was impressed with the services the companies offer, and when I saw zero knowledge encryption was offered, I was interested. It came down to Backblaze v iDrive and I settled on iDrive mainly because they allow unlimited computers and can store system images. I have played around with the software over the last week and can recommend iDrive to members. They have data centers backing up their data centers. I am confident my data is safe and remains private with them. Even though I now have cloud back up, I will still get a NAS.

Thanks for your post. Before covid, I travelled a lot and was away from my home country most of the year. My idea to leave it at a friend or relatives place was so I could cut the internet to my own home while I was away. Just one less bill to pay. The slow speeds do not worry me too much. I mainly take photos, not video. I read hat the Synology Hybrid RAID is also easier to swap out HDD's, and they can be of different sizes. I'll probably go with SHR-1. Snapshot is something I read about and see on Youtube, but I don't know what it is. Is it a Windows image that can be reloaded? I already have a UPS. It has a USB port. I see people connect their UPS to the NAS, not the power cable but with a USB cable. I don't know why. I have programed my UPS to safe shut down everything connected to it when there is 10% battery left. When you say you use the second Synology as a security back up, are you using a second NAS as a complete mirror to the first NAS? Are they both in the same location?

I believe the Synology software takes care of this for you. You set up a username and password and select the settings allowing remote access.

I have decided to buy my first NAS. I've never owned one, nor do any of my friends, so posting here for some discussion. I've done a bit of online research and I can definitely see their benefits. I've settled on the Synology brand. It's probably going to be a 4 bay NAS. I don't think I will outgrow a 4 bay NAS, so it should do me well into the future. Hard Drives will be Seagate Ironwolf, maybe the pro model. I don't have a lot of data to back-up, but what I do have I would like to take care of. I have between 1TB and 2TB, but currently I am backing up to 2 portable hard disk drives. One recently died, which started me on my NAS journey. It also occurred to me that it was useless having my laptop and 2 hard drives all at the same location. I would like to practice the 3-2-1 back-up policy and will leave the NAS at a relative's house. I have a question about this. Can I set the NAS up on my network, loading some data onto it and the settings I like, and then just connect it to my relative's network? They won't be using the NAS, and I will be always backing up from a remote location to it. Any problems with this, other than a slower speed? I'm learning about the different RAID's available, but what I don't understand is, if you have 3 or 4 HDD's in a 4 bay NAS, and each HDD is greater than the amount of data you need to store, why not use the mirroring RAID, where all the HDD's are clones, or mirrors? Why use a RAID 5 in this case? I've read Synology's Hybrid RAID is good also. Is anyone using it? I was pretty shocked seeing their prices. They are pretty expensive for a low spec device, but I understand there's some good wizardry going on inside them. I understand there's a bit involved in the initial set up, but thought it might be a good project during lock down. ???? I'll have more questions as the thread progresses. I'm in no hurry to buy, but it will be sooner rather than later. Do any member have a NAS? What are your experiences? Do you have any advice to share? Thanks.