South Australia is recruiting overseas-trained doctors harder than it has in a generation. The Medical Board’s Expedited Specialist pathway, open since October 2024, now lets UK and Irish general practitioners, anaesthetists, obstetricians and paediatricians, UK psychiatrists and general physicians, and New Zealand general practitioners obtain specialist registration without college assessment, subject to a period of supervised practice. SA Health reimburses relocation costs of up to $10,000 for metropolitan roles, $13,000 for regional and $15,000 for remote, for contracts signed by 31 December 2026, with a clawback if you leave within twelve months. The flights are the easy part.
What nobody hands you at the airport is a guide to how the Australian tax system treats you in your first two or three years, which is very differently from how it treats a doctor who trained here. Get it right and the rules are unusually generous. Get it wrong and you can pay tax on income Australia never intended to tax, or lose an exemption worth thousands a year because a form was lodged in the wrong order.
Here is what an overseas-trained doctor arriving in Adelaide needs to know.
First: which kind of resident are you?
Australia has four tests for tax residency. In practice, a doctor who arrives to take up a job, rents a home and settles in is an Australian tax resident from the day they arrive under the first of them — the “resides” test. The 183-day test is a backstop, not the main event.
You may have read about a proposed “bright line” 45-day test. It was announced in the 2021-22 Budget, consulted on in 2023, and has never been legislated. It has no start date. The four existing tests continue to apply.
In your arrival year you get a part-year tax-free threshold: $13,464 plus $4,736 for each month you were a resident, including the month you arrived, divided by twelve. Arrive in April and your threshold for that year is a little under $15,000, not $18,200. It is claimed at a specific label on the return and is easy to miss.
The temporary resident rules are the most valuable thing in this article
Being an Australian tax resident normally means Australia taxes your worldwide income. But if you hold a temporary visa — a Skills in Demand subclass 482 or a regional subclass 494 are the usual ones for doctors — you are also a temporary resident for tax purposes, and that changes almost everything about your foreign affairs.
While you are a temporary resident:
- Most foreign-source income is not taxed in Australia and does not go on your return. Rent from the house you kept in Manchester or Cork or Pune, dividends from a foreign portfolio, interest in a foreign bank account, a foreign pension — none of it.
- Capital gains on foreign assets are disregarded. If you sell the house abroad while still a temporary resident, Australia does not tax the gain.
- The one exception that catches doctors: employment or services income earned overseas while you are here is still taxable. Remote consulting for a UK provider, or a locum stint at home during annual leave, is Australian-taxable income.
Two traps.
The spouse trap. You are not a temporary resident, regardless of your own visa, if your spouse is an Australian citizen, a permanent resident, or a New Zealander on a protected special category visa. A UK doctor on a 482 married to an Australian is taxed on worldwide income from day one. This surprises a lot of people, usually at the worst moment.
The day it ends. Temporary residency stops the moment you cease to hold only a temporary visa — typically when your subclass 186 or 191 permanent visa is granted, or your spouse’s permanent residency comes through. On that day every asset you own that is not taxable Australian property — the house abroad, foreign investments, and Australian shares alike — is deemed to have been acquired at its market value. Growth before that date is outside the Australian net forever; growth after it is taxable. That makes the value of your overseas home and investments on the day of the visa grant one of the most important numbers in your Australian tax life. Get a valuation. Nobody will remind you to.
The house you left behind
Most overseas doctors keep a property at home, at least for a while. The rules change with your status.
While you are a temporary resident, the rent is exempt and a sale is disregarded, as above. Once you become a permanent resident, the rent is assessable in Australia with a credit for tax paid abroad — the foreign income tax offset — and a sale is a taxable capital gain measured from the market value on the day your temporary residency ended.
Do not assume the main residence exemption will cover it. The ATO’s stated position is that if you were not an Australian tax resident while you lived in the property, you are unlikely to qualify, and the six-year absence rule only applies to a home that was your main residence first, while you were a resident. A home you never lived in as an Australian resident is unlikely to qualify. Anyone with a substantial foreign property should have this modelled before choosing when to sell.
One more date. From the 2027-28 year, losses on residential rental property are quarantined against other income rather than deductible against salary, unless the property was contracted before 7:30pm on 12 May 2026 or is a new build that adds to Australian housing supply. An overseas home is residential property, and the new-build exception will not help it. For a doctor who becomes a permanent resident and keeps a negatively geared house abroad, the date of the original purchase matters.
The Medicare levy: 2% that some arrivals pay and some do not
Every Australian resident taxpayer pays the 2% Medicare levy unless they fall into an exemption category. The one that matters for arriving doctors is being a temporary resident who is not entitled to Medicare.
Whether you are entitled to Medicare depends on where you come from. Australia has reciprocal health care agreements with the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Italy, Malta, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Belgium and Slovenia. If you are from one of those countries, you are entitled to Medicare on arrival, you cannot get a Medicare Entitlement Statement, and you pay the levy like everyone else. (Italian and Maltese cover runs for six months only, which can open the exemption up for the balance of the year.)
If you are from a country without a reciprocal agreement — India, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, Iran, and most of the rest of the world — and you hold a temporary visa, you can apply to Services Australia for a Medicare Entitlement Statement and claim a full exemption from the levy, provided your dependants are also exempt. On a specialist’s salary that is several thousand dollars a year. The statement can take six to eight weeks, and you must have it before you lodge, so apply early. The exemption ends when you apply for permanent residency and become Medicare-eligible.
Then there is the Medicare levy surcharge — an additional 1% to 1.5% for higher earners without private hospital cover. For 2026-27 it starts at $105,000 for singles and $210,000 for families, and your reportable fringe benefits count towards that income. Two points for arrivals:
- The overseas visitor health cover your visa condition requires does not count as private hospital cover for surcharge purposes. A consultant on a 482 earning $250,000 with only the visa policy will pay the surcharge unless they add a complying Australian hospital policy.
- If you are exempt from the levy as a prescribed person and have no dependants, you are exempt from the surcharge too, whatever your income.
And a quiet one: your Lifetime Health Cover base day is the first anniversary of your full Medicare registration, not your arrival. Reciprocal Medicare does not count. Doctors over 30 who wait years to take out hospital cover pay a 2% loading per year for it, up to 70%.
The rates for 2026-27, and a $1,000 deduction you get for turning up
For residents, tax is nil to $18,200, then 15% to $45,000, 30% to $135,000, 37% to $190,000 and 45% above that, plus the Medicare levy where it applies. The 15% bottom rate is new this year and falls to 14% from 1 July 2027.
Non-residents pay 30% from the first dollar with no tax-free threshold, which is why the residency question in your arrival year is not academic.
New from 2026-27 is a $1,000 standard deduction for work-related expenses, available to resident taxpayers with employment income, with no receipts required. Union and professional association fees and income protection premiums can be claimed on top of it. If your actual work expenses exceed $1,000 you claim them in the usual way instead. For a first-year arrival with modest deductions, this is likely to be the better option.
If you work for SA Health: salary packaging and Triple S
SA Health is a public hospital employer, which means you can salary package up to $9,010 of ordinary expenses each FBT year — rent, mortgage, everyday spending — plus a separate $2,650 for meals and entertainment, without fringe benefits tax. Both figures are unchanged for 2026-27. The catch is that packaged amounts still appear on your income statement as a grossed-up reportable fringe benefits amount — roughly $17,000 for the main cap, or around $22,000 if you use both — and that figure counts towards the Medicare levy surcharge and towards Division 293 tax on super contributions. It is still worth doing; just do not be surprised when it appears.
Your superannuation as an SA Health employee goes into Super SA Triple S by default, temporary visa or not. Triple S is a constitutionally protected, untaxed scheme, and it works very differently from an ordinary fund: no contributions tax on the way in, no earnings tax, and the tax deferred to when you withdraw. We have written about that in detail in our guide to superannuation for Adelaide doctors.
One point in that guide matters especially to arrivals. If you eventually leave Australia permanently on a temporary visa, you claim your super as a Departing Australia Superannuation Payment, taxed at 35% on the taxed element and 45% on the untaxed element. Triple S money is untaxed, so the headline exit rate is the higher one — but an ordinary fund has already paid 15% on every contribution and on its earnings along the way, so the net outcome is much closer than 45-versus-35 suggests, and Triple S can come out ahead over a longer stay. SA Government employees can direct their contributions to a fund of their choice, so this is a decision to make deliberately at the start, with real numbers, rather than discover at the end. New Zealand citizens are outside this scheme altogether; their super transfers to KiwiSaver instead.
Bringing a foreign pension across is a separate exercise with its own clock. For a permanent resident, a transfer completed within six months of becoming an Australian resident carries no Australian tax on the fund’s growth; after that, the growth since you arrived is taxable. While you remain a temporary resident the position is more nuanced and should be checked before you move anything. UK pensions add the complication that the receiving Australian fund must be on HMRC’s recognised overseas scheme list, which in practice rules out most mainstream funds for anyone under 55. This is specialist work, and worth getting right once rather than fixing later.
What you can and cannot deduct in year one
The principle is that costs incurred to get a job are not deductible; costs incurred to do it are.
Not deductible: your initial AHPRA registration, Australian Medical Council assessment and primary source verification fees, English language tests, visa application costs, and the cost of moving yourself and your family to Adelaide. If SA Health pays you a cash relocation allowance, that is taxable income; if it reimburses specific relocation costs as a benefit, it is generally exempt from fringe benefits tax and not taxable to you. Ask which one you are getting.
Deductible: annual AHPRA renewal, medical indemnity insurance, professional association and college membership, and self-education that maintains or improves the skills you use in your current employment. That last word does the work. Fellowship exam fees for a registrar already employed in a training position are generally deductible. Examinations sat to obtain initial registration before you were employed are not.
Your student loan from home
If you have a UK student loan, repayments are handled by the Student Loans Company under its overseas repayment scheme, not through your Australian tax return. For the 2026-27 UK tax year the Plan 2 threshold for someone living in Australia is £29,385, and if you do not provide evidence of your income the Student Loans Company sets a fixed monthly amount instead. Tell them you have moved. The repayments are a private expense and are not deductible in Australia.
The first-year checklist
- Confirm your temporary resident status — and check the spouse rule before you assume.
- Do not put foreign rent, dividends or pension income on your Australian return while you are a temporary resident. Do put any overseas locum or consulting income on it.
- If you are from a non-reciprocal country, apply for the Medicare Entitlement Statement now. It takes up to eight weeks and you cannot lodge without it.
- If you earn over $105,000 and rely on overseas visitor cover, get an Australian hospital policy or budget for the surcharge.
- Decide where your super should go based on how long you expect to stay, with the exit tax modelled rather than assumed.
- Get your foreign assets valued on the day your permanent visa is granted. Diarise it now; the date will arrive faster than you think.
- Keep your AMC, AHPRA and college receipts separately from your relocation receipts, because they are treated differently.
Talk to us
We act for a growing number of overseas-trained doctors across Adelaide — hospital consultants and registrars with SA Health, general practitioners in the suburbs and the regions, and specialists coming through the expedited pathway. The first return is where most of the value is, and it is where most of the mistakes happen.
You can read more on our accountants for medical professionals page. Two related guides may also help: our junior doctor’s guide to tax in Adelaide and our article on the tax mistakes Adelaide doctors make.
Get in touch with our Adelaide team before your first return, not after.
This article is general information only and was prepared in September 2026. It does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not tax, legal, migration or financial product advice. Visa categories, reciprocal health care arrangements and thresholds change, and the treatment of foreign assets depends heavily on individual circumstances and the relevant tax treaty. You should obtain advice specific to your situation before acting.
