how to leave australia

Guide

The four residency tests, explained properly

There is no form you sign to stop being an Australian tax resident. There are four legal tests, decades of case law, and an ATO ruling that runs to thousands of words. Here is what actually decides it.

Why there are four tests, not one

You are an Australian tax resident if you satisfy any one of four tests in the tax law: the resides test, the domicile test, the 183-day test, or the Commonwealth superannuation test. To become a non-resident, you need to fail all four. The ATO’s current consolidated view is Taxation Ruling TR 2023/1, which replaced the older rulings but did not change the law. It restates how the ATO reads the same tests that have been in the Act since 1936.

The practical consequence: residency is decided on your whole fact pattern, weighed together. No single fact is decisive (with one exception, below), and no single fact is safe to ignore.

The resides test: where does your life actually happen?

The primary test asks whether you “reside” in Australia according to the ordinary meaning of the word. Courts have glossed it as where you dwell permanently or for a considerable time, where your settled routine is. The things that get weighed are unglamorous: where your family lives, whether a home stays available to you here, how often you come back and in what pattern, where your job and business interests sit, where your car is garaged, which GP and gym you use, even club memberships and the electoral roll.

Notice what is not on that list: your intentions, on their own. You can genuinely intend to live in Dubai forever, but if your spouse stays in the family home in Sydney and you fly back every school holidays, the ATO will argue (with case law behind it) that you never stopped residing here.

The domicile test: the one that catches most departing Australians

Even if you stop “residing” here, you remain a resident if your domicile is Australia unless the Commissioner is satisfied your permanent place of abode is outside Australia. Almost every Australian-born person leaving has an Australian domicile, so this is the test most departures actually turn on. “Permanent” does not mean forever. It means more than temporary or transitory. The classic markers: a stint of roughly two years or more, a settled home abroad (not a hotel or a friend’s spare room), and a life that has demonstrably moved.

The 183-day test and the Commonwealth super test

The 183-day test mostly catches people coming to Australia: spend 183 or more days here in an income year and you are resident, unless your usual place of abode is elsewhere and you don’t intend to take up residence. For departees, it matters as a hard ceiling, spend more than half the year back in Australia and you will struggle to argue anything else. The Commonwealth super test is the one true bright line: contributing members of certain Commonwealth government schemes (CSS and PSS) and their spouses and young children are deemed resident, full stop, wherever they live.

Harding: the fight that shouldn’t have been necessary

Glenn Harding left Australia for Bahrain in 2009, permanently, to work in Saudi Arabia. His wife and youngest son stayed in the Queensland family home, planning to join him later (they never did, the marriage ended instead). Because he was waiting for them, he lived in a furnished serviced apartment. The ATO assessed him as a resident, and at first instance the Federal Court agreed: the temporary apartment meant no permanent place of abode abroad.

The Full Federal Court overturned that in 2019. It held that “place of abode” can mean the town or country you have settled in, not the specific dwelling, Mr Harding had permanently abandoned Australia even if his apartment was temporary. He won. But he won after roughly a decade of dispute, an amended assessment, and two courts. The lesson is not “serviced apartments are fine”. The lesson is that a fact pattern with a spouse in the Australian home and temporary accommodation abroad is one the ATO will litigate, and the fix, a settled lease in your own name from early on, is cheap.

Pike: resident for a decade without noticing

Dennis Pike moved to Thailand in 2006 for work in the tobacco industry. His partner and children lived in Brisbane, and he visited them regularly for years. The courts found he remained an Australian resident under domestic law for every single year (the family and the visit pattern were enough) and he was also a Thai resident. What saved him was the Australia, Thailand tax treaty’s tie-breaker, which assigned him to Thailand for most years because his “habitual abode” was there.

Two warnings live in Pike. First: family in Australia plus patterned returns kept a man resident for a decade despite working and living abroad the entire time. Second: he was rescued by a treaty. Move to a country with no Australian tax treaty (the UAE, for instance) and there is no tie-breaker to catch you.

The bright-line reform that never arrived

In 2019 the Board of Taxation recommended replacing all of this with a modern two-step rule: a primary 183-day test, then a “factor test” with a 45-day threshold for everyone else. The 2021, 22 Federal Budget announced the government would adopt it. As at mid-2026 it has still not been legislated, no bill, no start date, successive governments non-committal. Plan under the law that exists: four tests, weighed facts, no bright line. If reform ever passes, day counts will matter even more than they do now, which is one more reason to keep a clean travel log from day one.

What this means for your planning

General information only, not tax, legal or financial advice, and no tax agent services are provided. Verify your position with a registered tax agent before acting. Rates and rules last verified: 23 July 2026.