sojourner007

A pet cafe in Asoke (https://www.asokpethouse.com/) has regular cat adoption sessions.

According to this it's generally only 7 years: https://community.ato.gov.au/s/question/a0J9s0000001Gs5EAE/p00041155

I submitted my tax return in Australia last time more than 15 y ago, and then moved to Thailand, where I've been living since then. Now I'm considering returning to Australia and becoming a tax a resident there again. According to online information, the ATO keeps individual's tax records for only 5 years. I've lost my TFN and tax paper records and so I wonder if I'll need to apply for a new TFN. Or should I try to resurrect the old one somehow, if it still exists in the ATO's database?

If one cannot produce documents proving that one's money come from a job, can sale of an investment, such as a property, serve as an acceptable source? When the 'know your customer' craze started among Western financial institutions a few years back, I was suddenly asked by my stock brokers, where I held my investments for years, to explain the original source of the funds. And while some demanded evidence of former wages that I received, others were satisfied with account statements showing that the money to fund my account came from sold previous investments. So if I move my offshore EUR 1M to Thailand and buy a property here, sell it a short while later, hopefully without a significant loss on commission and tax, then transfer the sale proceeds to Australia, would the sale agreement document likely to satisfy my Australian bank as evidence of a legitimate source of the money received?

Thank you, Inala, for your insightful and very helpful comments on my problem. While the focus of your comments is tax implications of bringing offshore funds to Australia, I'm also concerned about the money being simply frozen by a bank on their receipt for money-laundering screening. Do you think that there is a risk of that happening if one makes an international transfer to an Australian RE agent's trust account for a property purchase? After reading your post, I've come across the following in an online article by Austrac, Strategic analysis brief: Money laundering through real estate 2015,: "The following indicators may assist to identify potential money laundering...Deposits to buy a property have been sourced from an offshore bank...Transactions in which the parties are foreign or a non-resident for tax purposes". Taken that into account, do you think that it is then safer to move the money first to a Thai bank, which would not be considered as a typical offshore one, and then pay the Australian RE trust account? I initially thought that Australian banks are perhaps less vigilant, in regards to money-laundering screening, towards large incoming international payments, if the account holder is an Australian tax resident. The above Austrac reference may seem as confirming somewhat my view. However, as you point out, that such a transfer may incur a huge Australian tax liability if one is already a tax resident. I guess, to avoid the liability, one would have to prove to the ATO that the money transferred have been earned, and paid tax on, in Australia or in a country which has a double taxation treaty with Australia? That would be difficult for me to prove, as I mentioned in my original post.

I will ask the bank, but its customer service staff nowadays is located in the Philippines or India and whatever their answer is on the phone carries no significance to what will actually happen when the funds arrive. The current money-laundering regulations make banks paranoid about incoming transfers from overseas. Plenty of reports on the internet about banks accounts in Anglo-saxon countries being frozen when receiving large international transfers.

I'm an Australian who has been living in Thailand for many years. I'm thinking of leaving Thailand for good and returning to Australia. I have about EUR 1M in an account with a European stock broker and I'd like to transfer the funds to Australia. Has anyone had a recent experience of moving similar, or larger amounts, to their home countries from abroad? I'm primarily concerned about my Australian bank freezing the funds and asking questions about their origin and how they were earned. I've not worked for more than 15 years and I'm not running any business. Originally I earned the money from jobs in Australia and overseas but unfortunately I did not keep much documentation from those years proving my employment and salaries in contract roles that I had then. Would it result in fewer questions if I first transfer the money to a USD account in Thailand and then move it to Australia, rather than directly paying the funds from an offshore financial centre to an Australian bank? A lot has been written on this forum about problems and limitations of transferring smaller amounts from baht accounts to banks in home countries. Are local banks' foreign currency accounts subject to the same limits and documentary requirements for international transfers? I'm planning to use the money to buy a property in Australia. Perhaps, if I find a suitable property, I could then pay the money directly from my offshore broker's account to the real estate agent's escrow account towards the purchase, bypassing my own Australian bank account? I'm currently a tax resident of Thailand. Will my Australian bank ask fewer questions if I first declare myself a tax resident of Australia and then move the funds from offshore?