ME :)

HMRC would be the Australian Tax Office (ATO) equivalent or the USA’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which deals with all things tax. I submitted a tax return about 3 months ago, just before I left to go back to Australia for 2 months. Since I don’t have any knowledge of the UK tax system, I handballed this particular task off to my accountant.

The accountant assured me that the Tax Return would be processed in about 2 weeks and the good news was that I was going to receive a tax refund of around £200. While in Australia I had heard no news of the tax return or saw any credit transferred to my bank account. It was not until I returned back to London did I call up HMRC to see what was going on. It turns out that after 3 months, this straight forward tax return application still hadn’t being processed!

How difficult could it be? The tax return application was like 2 pages and all they had to do was punch these numbers in to the computer, and the computer would spit out a figure (negative for tax refund, positive for tax owing – simple). It wasn’t like they had to compute each tax return manually, we live in the age of computers!

Well I did receive the tax return calculation letter back this week and to my surprise the accountant informed me that instead of receiving a tax refund of £200, I owed HRMC £500! How did this happen? Did my accountant stuff something up?

My accountant said that there was an “additional student loan repayment (hightlighted) that is due but as we were not informed of this, it was not included on the personal tax calculation”. Hold on a sec. What is a student loan repayment I asked? In the 2 years I have been in London, there was never a time I became a student so why would I have a student loan? Also on the Working-Holiday Visa, I’m quite sure you cannot just take up a course randomly like that, you’d need a student visa?

After a few calls to HMRC, I got a few things cleared up and was finally told that they would re-calculate my tax return application. They said if I was sure I didn’t tick the student loan repayment option because that was the only way it would have been calculated. I said, how would I know how much to pay in student loans in the first place?

So in conclusion, some dumbass in HMRC still trying to get over the Christmas hangover tries to slug me with a £700 tax on a Student Loan Repayment that doesn’t exist. Her Majesty please get it right this time and sack the idiot for wasting my time.

smiles

It was not until I received news of the UK Visa approval did I really let loose and go fishing mad. I went to the south west of Melbourne to Geelong to catch some Silver Bream on the Cunningham Pier. I went to the far east of Melbourne to Lake Entrance to haul in about 30 decent sized sand crabs and 1 legal sized flathead. Since there was not a lot of fish biting in the Lakes, I ended up on the sandy tracks around Sale towards Loch Sport to catch some more flathead and silver bream.

Next up I headed slightly east of Melbourne down to Portsea (a favorite place) on Christmas Day whereby Andrew finally managed to land a huge silver whiting off the pier but didn’t have any luck with pulling in the squid as others around him were luring in extremely large specimens for dinner.

Finally I headed up North East between Cohuna and Echuca to camp and fish the Murray River. The fishing here was hot and using an unconventional bait – cheese for those playing at home, I managed to set a fishing personal best with a tally of 27 silver perch, 2 golden perch, 1 carp and 2 turtles. I threw back the small species and only kept about 10 silver perch between 3 of us. Khoa on the other hand who normally has the worst luck fishing didn’t manage to catch anything on cheese but with freshwater prawn that I caught hauled in 9 silver perch of which only 2 were keepers.

The fish are always biting in the Murray River, the skill was to land them or rather hook them in the mouth. The Murray Cod which were my target species didn’t seem to want to bite so they should consider themselves lucky for I will be back one day and land one of those beasts.

smiles

It’s great to kick start the new year of 2009 back in London and continue on with my journey after suspending it or rather put it on hold for the past 2 months at home in Melbourne. Now that I have returned and everything appearing to be back on track, I can begin to map out the next travel destinations and what to do with myself for the next couple of years.

It’s taken almost 6 months but finally I have the skilled visa to stay in the UK for the next 3 years with a possibility to extend and stay longer. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I had been diagnosed with anxiety attack symptoms but to say that the past 6 months has been a bumpy ride is an understatement. The past 6 months have culminated into a rather eventful and stressful period of which I never want a repeat of again.

With my future in the hands of the UK Home Office and for them to take 6 months to decide my fate, I cannot describe the to you the euphoria or huge sigh of relief when news of the visa approval mid December. I was neither excited nor screaming and running around the house but rather I was just mirthful inside to know that the saga had ended and the ending was a happy one.

I’ve described below some of the events that transpired in the last 6 months. I fathom those who are in limbo and for who are about to experience the same predicament and so my only advice would be is to be extremely patient. If you really want the visa, you’ll have to wait for it.

1.    Before planning the 3 month around the world trip from end of Jan to end of April 2008, the plan was to come back then earn a bit of cash before applying for the UK skilled visa from the UK working holiday visa. However little did I know that upon returning to London, the UK Home Office had implemented a new immigration system which was based on a points system (adopted from the Australian Immigration System).

What this meant was that I could no longer apply for this skilled visa here in London but instead I had to apply from my home country, being Australia. The new immigration system was being rolled out at the end of June 2008 so I had to rush to get all the paper work and get the application submitted otherwise I risked going back to Australia and waiting 3 months to obtain the skilled visa.

2.    I submitted the application 1 week before the new immigration laws were passed. The reason I cut it so fine was because my pay slips just prior going on the around the world trip was £100 short of the minimum threshold for salary earning requirement. I still cannot believe it was £100 short so I had to wait about 2 weeks to include the first few weeks of work earnings prior to coming back.

3.    The UK embassy in Canberra, Australia had imposed a ridiculous rule which they later overturned due to the number of complaints. This rule was the infamous 50/50 rule which states that you can not work more than 50% of your stay on the UK working holiday visa. The working holiday visa actually states you cannot work for more than 12 months of your 24 month stay. So if you were to work the 6 months of your visa and then decide to go home and apply for the skilled visa, you have broken the visa rules because during those 6 months, you worked 100% of the time.

Since you have broken the rules, your name has a mark against it and future applications for a visa to any country will be problematic. If they hadn’t overturned this decision, I wouldn’t have continued on with my application for the skilled visa. I didn’t want to risk being blacklisted for breaking visa rules and being questioned about it if I had any intention of applying for a visa elsewhere.

4.    Last but not least, the 7 day bank statement rule for the maintenance requirement. To obtain the Entry Clearance, you had to have in your bank account a sum of £2800 and above for the last 3 months. If during this 3 month period whereby your bank account dips below £2800, you will be denied the Entry Clearance. I didn’t have a problem with the maintenance requirement but I did have a problem with proving it.

The UK Home Office wanted from my bank a statement which proves that I had £2800 and above for the last 3 months. They wanted this particular statement to be valid for 7 days. This meant that the moment I obtained this bank statement, I had 7 days to get back to Australia and submit the Entry Clearance application otherwise this statement becomes invalid. How ridiculous is this rule? A bank normally takes 3-5 working days to get this statement out to you so that means if you order a statement on a Monday, you would be lucky to get it on a Wednesday.

When you get the statement, you will have to leave the UK the following day and you will arrive on the Friday when all businesses would be close. The UK Embassy in Canberra doesn’t work on weekends so your only choice is to have the application submitted on the weekend and hope it arrives on the Monday of which the bank statement would be INVALID. It is invalid because if you order bank statements on a Monday, it is 8 days until the following Monday. Whoever came up with this stupid rule should be sacked in all honesty.

How did I get around this problem? I was lucky enough to go to a bank and using a template from my immigration consultant, I asked them to draft me the same letter with the information I needed and dated when I asked, so that I would have enough time to get back to Australia and submitting the new paperwork and still have a valid bank statement.

I am happy to say that common sense has prevailed and the UK Home Office has now changed this ridiculous requirement and stated that the bank statement need not be 7 days valid but instead a full month. Read about it here.

Happy New Year!

smiles