Leaving Australia for New Zealand: the tax to sort out before you go

Working out when your residency ends

Australia has no form you sign to stop being a tax resident. If you have always lived here, your domicile stays Australian while you are away unless you permanently migrate, and under the domicile test you remain a resident until your permanent place of abode is outside Australia.

For a move to New Zealand it usually turns on how long you intend to stay, whether you have set up a home there, whether you still have one here, and where your family and money are. A lease in Wellington and a permanent job there point one way. A Brisbane house kept empty for your return points the other.

Settle this first. Everything below depends on the date residency ends, which is usually, but not always, the day you leave.

Your shares and other assets: the deemed sale

When you stop being a resident, you are taken to have disposed of your CGT assets at their market value on that day. The legislation calls this CGT event I1; the ATO calls it a deemed disposal. Australian shares, units in managed funds, crypto and overseas investments are all caught. Nothing has been sold and no cash has come in, but a capital gain can still land in your final Australian return.

Two things soften it. If you owned the asset for at least 12 months and were an Australian resident for the whole time you owned it, you get the full 50% discount on the deemed gain. And assets that are taxable Australian property, which mainly means Australian real estate, are left out of the deemed sale altogether.

You can also choose to disregard every gain and loss from the deemed sale. If you do, your assets are treated as taxable Australian property until you sell them or come back as a resident, and Australia taxes the whole gain when that happens, including growth after you left. It is all or nothing: you cannot defer the winners and realise the losers.

Deferring is not automatically the better option. It keeps Australia's claim on those assets open for as long as you hold them, and an asset bought after 8 May 2012 and sold while you are a foreign resident only gets the discount for the part of the time you were resident. The tax reform laws passed in 2026 also matter here: for gains that accrue after 1 July 2027, the 50% discount is replaced by indexation of the cost base and a minimum 30% tax, which changes the comparison for growth after that date. Which works out cheaper depends on the gain, how long you hold, and whether you plan to come back.

One group is different. A New Zealand citizen on a Special Category visa who is not a protected SCV holder, and whose partner is not an Australian citizen, permanent resident or protected SCV holder, may be a temporary resident for tax purposes. A temporary resident leaving Australia is not taken to have disposed of anything. Check your visa history before assuming the deemed sale applies to you.

Keeping the house

Australian real estate stays inside the Australian tax net wherever you live. If you rent the house out, the rent is Australian-sourced income, so you lodge an Australian return each year to declare it and claim the expenses, taxed at foreign resident rates with no tax-free threshold.

The main residence exemption is gone entirely if you are a foreign resident on the day you sign the sale contract. Not even a partial exemption survives for the years you lived in it. The one way back in is the life events test: a continuous foreign residency of six years or less and, during it, a terminal medical condition affecting you, your spouse or your child under 18, the death of your spouse or child under 18, or a sale under a formal agreement after a relationship breakdown. If you will sell the old home one day, think about when before you go.

When you do sell as a foreign resident, you cannot give the buyer the ATO clearance certificate that Australian sellers use, so the buyer withholds an amount from the price and pays it to the ATO.

Super stays where it is, unless you move it

Australian citizens, permanent residents and New Zealand citizens cannot take super out as a departing Australia superannuation payment. That payment is for temporary visa holders. Your super stays in your fund until you meet a condition of release, generally age 60 and retirement, wherever you live.

The alternative is the trans-Tasman portability scheme. Once you have permanently emigrated to New Zealand, you can transfer your super to a KiwiSaver scheme. You sign a statutory declaration that you have emigrated, provide proof of residence at a New Zealand address, have an IRD number, and move the whole balance. Only APRA-regulated funds can send money this way, so a balance in a self-managed fund does not qualify as it stands. The transfer is not taxed. The Australian-sourced part keeps Australian access rules, so it cannot go towards a first home in New Zealand. There is more on how the two parts are tracked in our article on KiwiSaver and Australian super.

Leaving it in the Australian fund is the other choice. It stays there until you meet a condition of release, wherever you are living by then, and the only thing to update is your address.

A HELP debt follows you across the Tasman

If you have a HELP, VET Student Loan or apprenticeship loan and expect to live overseas for 183 days or more in any 12 months, you must lodge an overseas travel notification with the ATO within 7 days of leaving and keep your contact details current.

After that, every year you report your worldwide income to the ATO by 31 October, or lodge a non-lodgment advice if your income was at or below a quarter of the minimum repayment threshold. New Zealand salary counts. If your worldwide income is over the threshold you make a compulsory repayment or pay an overseas levy, and the balance keeps being indexed until it is paid.

The last Australian return

The year you leave, you are a resident for part of it. You get a reduced part-year tax-free threshold: $13,464 plus $4,736 divided by 12 and multiplied by the months you were resident, counting the month you left. Your income while resident is taxed at resident rates, and any deemed capital gain goes in the same return.

You do not always have to wait until after 30 June. If you are leaving permanently, will have no Australian-sourced income afterwards other than interest, dividends or royalties, and have no HELP or other study loan debt, the ATO accepts an early return on the paper form. Processing takes 50 business days. Otherwise you lodge from 1 July as usual.

Who to tell

Once your bank and share registries know you are a foreign resident and have your New Zealand address, they withhold tax at source: generally 10% on interest, and on unfranked dividends a 30% rate that most of Australia's tax treaties cut to 15%. You then do not declare that income in an Australian return. Without your overseas address they may withhold at 47%.

Give your super fund the new address as well, and update your contact details with the ATO in myGov. Keep one Australian bank account open if you can. If you lodge online from overseas, the ATO can only pay a refund into an Australian account.

On the New Zealand side

New Zealand makes you a tax resident when you have been there more than 183 days in any 12 months or have a permanent place of abode there, whichever comes first. Under the 183-day rule, residency is backdated to the first of those days.

If you have not been a New Zealand tax resident at any time in the previous 10 years, you are a transitional resident, and Inland Revenue's temporary exemption is still in place. It covers most foreign income for about four years: Australian interest, dividends and rent. It does not cover pay for work you do. You get it once, automatically, and it ends early if you claim Working for Families or include the exempt income in your New Zealand return. A New Zealander returning home qualifies as well, if they were not a New Zealand tax resident at any time in the 10 years before.

Rent from a Brisbane property in those first four years is taxed in Australia and exempt in New Zealand. When the exemption ends, New Zealand taxes your worldwide income, and relief from paying tax twice on the same income comes through the double tax agreement.

This is general information, not advice for your circumstances. Residency and the CGT choice in particular turn on personal facts, so get advice before you commit to either.