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The Australian Government sees visa grant as a privilege bestowed on applicants, rather than as a personal right.
Holding a business visa is therefore not without its own monitoring requirements and ongoing obligations.
That said, the threshold for gaining permanent residence is not difficult:
- You have 4 years to sort the business out, but only need to own it for two and meet the turnover/employment requirements for one year.
- English is not required for PR or the earlier provisional application.
- $4000 weekly turnover is very modest for many business types. The only ones that would struggle are mainly small service businesses, self employed with no staff or contractors, home based businesses and some franchises that are not independent enough of the franchisor.
- The PR requirements can be mixed and matched, depending on business type, employment levels and personal funds/equity.
Moreover:
- Personal funds do not always have to be totally transferred to Australia.
- Applicants are not required to sell their overseas business.
- The visa can be transferred to the spouse if the main applicant cannot continue
- In most states children go to school for local school fee levels rather than foreign student fee rates.
- Successful applicants can travel freely in and out of Australia, they are not obliged to stay in the country at all times - although it does pay to bear in mind the need to remain in control of the business which is hard to prove if too much time is spent overseas unless it can be justified.
- It is possible to apply for a second visa term to get a total of 8 years.
- Most states allow a change of business type during the visa (it pays to ask them first).
The drawbacks?
- Australia offers a vigourous and competitive business environment, so it pays to do research, build support networks and take regular professional advice.
- Some staff occupations will involve award rate payments which complicate payroll issues.
- Clients are often a long way from home and what they are familiar with. Those who fail often have not done their own research or bothered to address the need for family personal support, both of which make good settlement incredibly difficult to achieve. It can be easy to lose substantial amounts of money if they do not take professional advice or don’t know to get a second opinion on some matters.
- Some overseas businesses will not survive in Australia, because of lower population densities, different legislative requirements, desperate shortages of some skilled workers and different cultural behaviours.
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