Brett Evans

Whereas if every month you're transferring some pounds back to Australia...

at the end of your five years, the money's there waiting for you.

And some months you've got good prices, some months you've got bad prices and so on and so forth.

But it averages out and smooths out that volatility.

It's not a matter of trying to beat the market.

Companies have gone faster trying to beat the FX market with a lot more businesses than you do.

So to me it's aggregating that over that period of time.

And the best example I can provide is right now.

Over the last 12 months, the Australian dollar has gone from 62 cents to the US dollar to 72 cents to the US dollar.

If you were saying this time last year, oh, 62, it's too expensive, I'm going to wait, you would beg for 62 cents right now when it's at 72.

So to me, that process happens in a very gradual sort of way.

When you do return back to Australia, you virtually have a finite amount of time to move that money back into the country before you are taxed.

Because let's say, for example, you leave a million dollars or pounds or euros overseas, and then 12 months later, you take it back to Australia.

Now, you might have held off to try and get a better exchange rate.

the ATA will view that as classifying cash as an asset because you've had plenty of time to move the money, you've left it there to get a better return and you will pay capital gains tax if the exchange rate between when you arrived back and when you transferred is big enough to make a gain, they'll go, you did that to make a capital gain.

Yep, 100%.

So long during the expat journey and short on the repatriation.

So we essentially use the three-pronged approach and we take the best offer.

Obviously, if you've got a reasonable amount of liquidity with the bank, you should be able to get preferred rates.

Ask and push them for it.