Mo' money, mo' problems

So first of all, thank you to everyone who was prompted to write to me by my rather desperate appeal a couple of posts back. It's been so good to hear from you all, and I promise I'll reply properly soon. Work has gone a bit mad because the semester starts tomorrow, so I've been low on time and haven't had the chance to get back to everyone the way I'd like to, but I will.

In other news, it *looks* (fingers crossed) like I'll be getting my super back. For those who don't know (i.e., the non-Australians), your superannuation is your mandatory Australian retirement fund. If you're a foreigner who has been working legally and leaves Australia permanently, you are allowed to reclaim this money... but it's not quite as straightforward as that sounds. I want to put this down because I know a lot of you know people from overseas who are living and working in Australia, and for many of them their super will be a significant amount of money by the time they leave. So:

1. If you don't reclaim your super within six months of your permanent departure, it will be given to the Tax Office and you will have no chance of getting it back, ever. I cannot stress this enough: if you fall outside that six months, you've lost it, full stop.
   
2. Furthermore, this means that you must have COMPLETED the application process within six months. Nowhere I've seen makes that clear, nor do they lay out that it can take up to four months for all of the paperwork to be completed by all of the relevant agencies (the ATO, the Department of Immigration, and your super fund). Again, it doesn't matter where you are in the process when the six months ticks over, or whose fault the delay is: once that timeframe is up, it's up, and you've lost your money. I nearly lost out on mine because of this, and ended up on the phone pleading with a lovely woman in Hobart named Sue to queue-jump some of my paperwork. (Sue, if you're out there: you're my girl.) I got lucky in that she was sympathetic, but you can't expect that.
   
3. You can't apply for a super refund until after you've left Australia permanently. Don't even try, because there aren't even any initial steps you can take. You have to be gone for good first.
4. I take that back, there is one thing you can and should do before you leave: If you have multiple super accounts (e.g., if you've had different jobs and some/all made you use their preferred super fund rather than allowing you to nominate your own), roll them all over into one. You have to lodge separate applications for each account, and there's no good reason for maintaining multiple ones anyway.
   
5. Start on the process as absolutely soon as you are able after your departure. (See point 2.) Both the ATO and the Immigration websites have the information you need (I won't give links because those websites get tinkered with a lot); you can also contact your super fund or check their website for help, but understand that your super fund can't do anything until you've sorted the paperwork from Immigration and the ATO.
   
6. The process will be streamlined if you have an Australian bank account they can pay into. They will do international transfers or bank cheques, but there are fees associated and they make it very clear that if anything goes missing, they don't give a rat's. Personally, I reckon that even if you don't have any other reason to keep an account open in Aus, this alone is worth the few months of extra fees.
   
7. Be aware that the government takes a cut of 35-45%. This is only to be expected and shouldn't put you off too much; apart from that, there's only one $55 fee associated with the paperwork, and whatever's left is better in your pocket than the government's. They'll only spend it on Tony Abbott's skin polish anyway. (Seriously, why is that guy so fucking shiny all the time? It's not natural.)
8. See point 2. Again. Really. I almost lost a LOT of money - the money that's going to clear my very substantial moving-related credit card debts and allow me to start looking to move out of my parents' house, thank Christ - simply because I didn't understand a) how long the process would take, and b) that they would be such hardasses about the process being completed within that timeframe. Mind you, I didn't understand it because it's not made clear anywhere (hell, the basic idea of reclaiming your super isn't really advertised, let alone the details; and let's not even start on how much harder this all would be if you weren't a native English speaker), and if I were the cynical type I'd say that it's awfully convenient that the government would impose these rules that make it more likely that the super will not be claimed within the required timeframe when they themselves will be the beneficiaries of any unclaimed super... but that's just me being suspicious, I'm sure.
   

I hope this ends up being useful to someone. I don't want to sound like too much of a humbug because as I said, it does look like I'll be okay; but the simple fact is that the process is obviously designed to make it less likely for departing workers to be able to access this money that they worked for and that came out of their paycheques, and that's pretty shit. Feel free to hit me with questions, if any arise.

XOXO