Why I Left Australia: Foreigners Now Get Better Tax Treatment Than Australians
By Jamie McIntyre
More than three years ago, I made the decision to leave Australia.
A lot of people assumed it was about lifestyle. Bali sunsets. Lower stress. Tropical weather. Better coffee at half the price. 🌴
Those things are nice, but they were not the real reason.
The real reason was that I could already see the direction Australia was heading economically and politically. I believed taxes would continue rising aggressively, productive people would increasingly be punished for creating wealth, and ordinary Australians would slowly become poorer while living inside one of the most resource-rich countries on earth.
Sadly, that prediction is now unfolding almost exactly as expected.
Australia is becoming a strange economic theme park where citizens carry the tax burden while foreign capital increasingly gets preferential treatment.
Meanwhile, Australians who leave for countries like Indonesia can often dramatically improve their quality of life, reduce stress, legally lower taxes, and reposition themselves from an overheated property market into emerging growth markets with far greater upside potential.
I have spent considerable time modelling the difference between investing as an Australian tax resident versus investing as a foreign resident.
Once you break it down properly, the system becomes almost absurd.
In many asset classes, foreigners are treated better than Australians themselves.
The Family Home Exception
Australians still receive one major tax advantage: the principal place of residence exemption.
If you sell your family home, the capital gain is generally tax free.
But even this can effectively be leveraged by foreigners.
A foreign national can become a genuine Australian tax resident, purchase a property, live in it as their home, then leave Australia and utilise the six-year absence rule. If structured correctly and they later return to Australian tax residency before selling, they may still access the exemption.
So on family homes, you could argue the system roughly balances out.
But after that, things become very uneven.
Investment Property: Foreigners Punished
When it comes to residential investment property, Australia absolutely hammers foreign investors.
Foreign owners can lose access to the main residence exemption if they are foreign residents at the time of sale. They face foreign owner surcharges, extra land tax, vacancy taxes in some states, and withholding tax rules upon sale.
Frankly, that part actually makes sense.
Australian housing should primarily benefit Australians.
No issue there.
Fixed Income: Suddenly Foreigners Win
But then the logic completely flips.
If an Australian tax resident earns interest income from term deposits or fixed income investments, they can pay up to 47% tax including Medicare levy.
A foreign resident may only face around 10% withholding tax.
Think about that for a moment.
The Australian citizen who stayed, worked, built businesses, paid taxes and contributed to the country can end up paying nearly five times more tax than the foreign investor parking money in Australia.
That is not intelligent policy. That is policy confusion.
Equities: The Gap Gets Worse
The asymmetry becomes even more extreme with shares.
Australian tax residents pay capital gains tax on equities, even after the 50% CGT discount.
Foreign residents generally pay no Australian capital gains tax at all on ordinary ASX-listed shares unless the company is heavily tied to Australian land assets.
So the foreign investor can potentially buy Australian shares, make millions, and legally pay little or no Australian CGT.
Meanwhile Australians themselves get taxed.
Even more concerning is the current push by the government to weaken or alter CGT concessions further, making Australian residents comparatively worse off again.
Then there are dividends.
Australian residents include franked dividends in taxable income and can still face very high marginal tax rates.
Foreigners lose the franking credit benefit but often pay no additional Australian tax on fully franked dividends.
On unfranked dividends, withholding taxes are frequently still lower than the top Australian marginal tax rates.
The more you model it, the clearer the pattern becomes:
Australia increasingly taxes domestic capital formation while remaining extraordinarily accommodating toward foreign capital ownership.
Australia Is Pricing Out Its Own Citizens
Anybody paying attention can already see this across the broader economy.
Look at energy policy.
Look at gas exports.
Look at coal.
Foreign capital often receives outstanding deals because governments claim Australia “needs” foreign investment.
I disagree.
Perhaps Australia would not need to beg for foreign capital if it stopped taxing and regulating its own citizens into exhaustion.
Countries like Singapore understand this.
Singapore aggressively encourages domestic wealth creation and capital accumulation.
Australia increasingly appears to do the opposite.
The “Brett Blundy Effect”
I call this the “Brett Blundy Effect.”
Successful Australians eventually look at the numbers and realise the system financially rewards them for leaving.
And honestly, who can blame them?
If someone can legally reduce their tax burden dramatically while improving their lifestyle, reducing stress, and gaining more freedom for their family, rational people will eventually make that move.
That is not a failure of the individual.
It is a failure of policy.
Why Many Australians Are Looking Toward Asia
This is one reason I left Australia more than three years ago and relocated much of my focus toward Southeast Asia.
In places like Bali, Lombok and other emerging regions of Indonesia, Australians can often sell out of inflated Western property markets and reposition into younger growth markets with rising tourism, infrastructure expansion and substantially lower living costs.
The lifestyle difference can also be dramatic.
Lower stress.
Lower costs.
Better weather.
More personal freedom.
And often a much higher quality of life.
Ironically, many Australians now feel wealthier living overseas than they do living in Australia itself.
That should concern policymakers deeply.
The Bigger Warning
Australia still has enormous potential.
It is resource rich, geographically strategic, and filled with talented people.
But governments cannot continue punishing productivity, taxing investment aggressively, inflating living costs, and expecting wealth creators to simply absorb it forever.
Eventually capital moves.
Eventually talent leaves.
Eventually entrepreneurs look elsewhere.
And increasingly, they already are.
New Zealanders once joked that if an Australian moved to New Zealand, the IQ of both countries increased.
In 2026, that joke may no longer be a joke at all.
