Honestly, I was looking forward to do my tax declaration this year. Mostly because I can look forward to a nice tax return, but also because tax declarations are not very difficult in Australia - at least compared to Germany.
One chapter of the tax declaration covers Medicare contributions, the public health care system in Australia. Since I am only a temporary resident, I don’t have access to Medicare, therefore I was trying to claim an exemption to avoid having to pay the contributions to a system which I am not allowed to use, because I think this would be a little erm… unfair.
Unfortunately the tax software told me that in order to claim the Medicare exemption, I need to have a Medicare Exemption Certificate. Ok so this meant postponing the submission of my tax declaration and obtaining a Medicare certificate first. Luckily the Medicare Exemption Certification office is in Hobart (or at least their P.O. Box), so I downloaded the form from their website, filled in the details and included the additional paperwork they asked for.
You need to include certified copies of your passport with all the visa stamps, probably to prove that you actually were in the country during the time you claim for exemption - in my case the whole financial year. Unfortunately since my previous passport was stolen last year, I only have the label from my current one which was issued in March this year. Since all visas are registered electronically, you don’t necessarily need a stamp anyway so they didn’t want to give me a new one at that time.
I included copies of what I had, knowing that it was basically incomplete, but because of that I explicitly included my phone number, hoping that they would simply give me a quick ring to get clarification if required.
I expected too much. Some days later they sent my application back, with a notice explaining that visa stamps need to cover the entire period claimed for exemption. Ok, so I sat down and wrote a short letter explaining that I don’t have the stamp of my previous visa anymore and therefore all I can supply is a copy of the email I received when my Working Holiday Visa was granted - which of course doesn’t indicate when I actually entered the country. This time I even included my email address.
Two weeks later the whole bundle of application documents came back for the second time. This time they used a text marker to emphasise that visa stamps must cover the entire period being claimed. At this point I knew how Bill Murray must have felt in ‘Groundhog day’, didn’t we have that before? … Then I noticed further down on the top sheet was a handwritten note, saying that if I cannot supply stamps then I would have to get a ‘Movement Record’ from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship instead. At last, some progress.
So yesterday I visited the friendly people at the Hobart office of the DIAC. After filling out four sheets of paperwork I got my Movement Record. Basically this is just half a page of printout and it doesn’t say much more than I arrived in early 2008, I didn’t leave the country since then, and I am allowed to stay until early 2012. But at least it has an official stamp, so this should be it.
Now I can finally submit my application for a Medicare Exemption Certificate again. Unless they send it back again I hope to have the certificate soon, so I can finally submit my tax declaration. I’m so so looking forward to it. I started making a few travel plans for the summer months and it all depends on the tax return.
Maybe this could be simplified a lot if Medicare would somehow have access to electronic visa details so they can verify these details themselves. So all the hassle with movement records and copying and certifying stamps and passports could be avoided. Or simply using the phone instead of sending letters could easily have saved weeks. But yeah, as long as everything works out as planned in the end, I am happy.
