Yeah, it was quite interesting how similar they were. Even right in the Amazon jungle, on the Amazon river near Manaus, you could have sworn you were on some muddy tributary in Australia.

I would recommend that you do go. I plan on going back to Rio very soon, possibly to stay for a much longer time. I particularly took to Rio De Janeiro, but that's just me, I'm more of a big city person. I find it hard being anywhere without lots of people and a nightlife

Huhu aussies!!!

just wanted to say "hi"

Hi Melle welcome back to the Aussie thread

Hi aussiefox,


thanks for your warm welcome

Arr G'day Melle, glad to see your smiling face back in the thread again, are you anywhere near Cologne?

Pete




I have never been to Brazil, but we had a holiday in Chile, travelled up through the lake district of Patagonia, down through Argentina, some years ago. I only wish we had more than the 10 days, but we were busy at the time. I will go back one day.
Incredibly beautiful.

Pete

I visited Argentina on my trip as well; only Buenos Aires though. I was stuck at the airport for a day or so in Argentina. As soon as we arrived in Buenos Aires, after flying 13 hours from Sydney, the pilots all went on strike

I would like to see Peru one day! First I'm keen to get back to Rio though. Definitely want to go for carnival

Bloody hell it was a long flight. Bris Melb, hung around 3 hours, Melb Santiago, I think 14 hours by the polar route. Patagonia is the most magnifient place pristine lakes with snow capped mountains reflecting back at you. we crossed quite a bit of the country by water in this area. Buenos Aires was a real surprise, very well designed, and spotlessly clean, oh and if you like steak, heaven.

Pete

Maybe we need an MMG travellers Thread.

I think the Aussie thread is actually a good place for travel discussion. Australia has one of the highest percentages of people holding a passport I remember reading.

A travellers thread would be a good idea though

hello everyone....i live in oz too. lucky folks who've been to brazil...i always planned to spend new year 2000 there in rio...sigh...never happened...maybe one day.
what i really wanted to ask people here is what do you do about tax on hyip earnings?? i'm just in my first game and so i'm just learning.
altho i reckon the govt gets more than enough of my money, i don't want to end up in trouble. what do you guys do?
thanks in anticipation.

I read in the papers that 4 MILLION people were on Copacabana beach in Rio for new years 2006. That's pretty impressive considering Rio has a total population of 7 million.

Welcome Chrissyg, glad you found the Aussie Thread.

I would love to know the answer to that question too.

I get all my earnings thru the Stormpay card, and even though it's not all that much yet, I am planning on earning alot more......

These earnings are supposedly anonymous......?anyone know.

I have a million and one questions I would like to ask on tax......I would love to know what others do too. I suppose I will have to pay a visit to an accountant at some stage.

Cheryl

Well Chezza,
I have a stormpay card, a Uniclear card, and a Loyal bank card. I believe you are flying well below the radar, but, you have probably heard of the ATO, investigating holders of international debit cards.

I don't know how much money you move through these cards. My rules for what it is worth:

Don't hit the same ATM every time, move around a little(a lot), make W/d's of less than $500.

Some days we have to hit a number of ATM's . The alternative of course is to declare your offshore income, pay the tax, and never have a worry in the world.

Offshore bank accounts are an option, Vanuatu being the closest to home, this will probably be on our agenda.

Pete

Let me make an offer to you all, if you wan't to visit Vietnam, and see a global ecoomy making it's first tottering steps, contact me for info. I am only too happy to provide advice, as a veteran of 10 or so trips.

I would be delighted to give travel adviCE.
pete.

Okay Pete, now you have my attention.

Vanuata???? Offshore bank accounts???

I am totally ignorant on this type of thing. I would LOVE to know more.

Can you explain to me how I go about doing this, etc. I assume having an account there means we don't have to declare our money?

You can PM me, or explain it here....................assuming of course that you don't mind.

Yes, I do use different ATM's, though at the moment i don't have much to worry about, because I am not earning enough for the ATO to take any notice of me......well not yet anyway........

And, while I am waiting for your response, I will start googling

Chezza

Hi Cheryl,
I have only started looking into that myself, so cannot give you any specifics, as I understand it you can use banking facilities there, but technically once you bring the money into Australia, it is taxable income.

Friends have set up a company in Maylasia, through a Melbourne lawyer, this allows them to pay their tax in Maylasia @ 5%, and bring the money into Australia tax free. The cost of this is relatively high, about 6k, however in the heady early days of pips they were making a fortune. I will ask them for details if you like.

As to Vanuatu, I will pass on info as I get it. I am in the happy situation of currently having a large tax loss from a company that we sold, this will allow me to declare online income for probably two years without the need to pay tax.

Pete

I think an offshore account only becomes an option once you start earning a significant amount. The fees etc. undergone through creation and upkeep of an offshore account, I believe, outweigh any benefits if you are only earning a standard amount. I think it will be relatively unbeneficial if you are not earning 10s of thousands.

I think it is the stigma attached to 'offshore bank accounts' that allure people more than anything. Keep in mind that this stigma has been attached by famous rich people having them to avoid tax; these guys are earning 100's of thousands if not millions.

An offshore bank account is nothing more than a holding place for your money. May as well use EMO...

If you are looking to go offshore you need to be looking into a trust. Basically what this means is you set up a trust which is not directly owned by you but you are the one who makes all the decisions as to what happens to the money in the accounts/investments linked up to the trust.

You can use a CC/DC linked to the trust account to purchase your fuel, rent, car hire, bills, etc, which is all tax free money for you. If you take out a small wage you must declare that as earnings. You can use the trust to invest in programs, stocks, businesses, real estate, etc so money earned on those things can build up your investments without the governement getting their cut.

This is an expensive thing to do and you have to know who you are dealing with, so unless you are earning a lot of money I would suggest to stay away from this.

As for tax in Aussie on what you earn on the net....don't go around hoping no-one is watching you by going to a million and one different ATM's using your supposedly anonymous card. If you get a knock on the door in five years of cheating the system what are you going to say? oh ooops? You'll end up behind bars and that's not one place I am going to be.

Know the loop holes, know the laws and keep updated with them.

I would suggest you visit your accountant for professional advice. You can earn up to $50k without declaring it in Aussie... but you have to make sure you run it as a hobby. If you spend many hours a week doing DD and investing they will look at you as a professional gambler or investor, and you don't want to go there. Claiming your earnings as a "hobby gambler" also depends on where you are earning your money... if you are earning it from Google adwords, etc you should definately approach your tax differently. It is very complex and it depends on your situation.

If I knew where you earn your money I could help more in what to say to your accountant. ie is it all hyip, autosurfs, etc? I am lucky to have a very good friend as an accountant who spent hundreds of hours working on my situation to make sure everything I was doing was legal, tax wise. I can offer assistance, but as I said, each case is different, you need to know what best suits you.

Thank you for your great post, I was referring to friends and trust is probably where they are, they also have a company in Australia, in which case what you are saying makes even more sense.

As I said. tax is not a problem for me this year, and probably next year, due to the reasons that I gave in my post. I have had advice from my accountant on this matter, and he is happy for us to declare our income from online programs in a normal way.

If you are not earning fairly large amounts, it is not an issue.

I am not sure about EMO, I know very little about it, I find Uniclear very useful, and, I can only imagine that they work in similar ways with the exception of the "do it yourself" money order.

I will take advantage of your kind offer as issues occur.

Pete

That is one of the most helpful posts I have read in a long time. Thanks so much for the info

I will pm you at some stage if that is okay, and let you know my situation. I would imagine it is fairly basic as apart from autosurfing, there is only one other program that I am in (profit sharing club).

My concern basically comes from the fact that I have read so many posts where people go to an accountant who (like most people) knows absolutely nothing about autosurfing. I would like to go informed as much as possible.

Again, thank you
Cheryl

As this is not common practice for accountants, it is hard to find one that knows anything about online earnings from autosurfs,hyips and the likes. I had to start my mate from the very beginning so he knew exactly what he was looking for, I'll never forget his face when I showed him one of my debit cards without a name on it, he was bewildered. One thing he said is that the card is linked to my name, maybe not directly but if the authorities want to know who the card belongs to, they can find out, after all it was posted to me at my address...

Anyway feel free to PM me, I am happy to help fellows Aussies with all I can.

My accountant nearly hit the deck when he first became aware of our earnings, he did not make an issue of the legality, but, wondered what he was doing behind a desk.

We have come to the realisation that if we wish to continue in online someday we will have to pay tax, as in any other job.

As my accountant said, he has three prostitutes, and an SP bookie among his clients, and none of them have problems with the ATO, as they all pay tax.

Pete

Do you claim your investments and losses? Or just whatever you pull off the net you claim as earnings? If you are going to claim everything you pull off surely you are best to open a business and run it that way so you can claim such things as a percentage of your bills, rent (if you pay it) upgrades to your computer and the likes.

You could also take into consideration your losses and investments.

It is a complex thing due to the fact that you are dealing with a lot of illegal programs. To me and my accountant, HYIP's, autosurfs, etc are a gamble. Affiliate programs are different...

Do you keep track off all your investments and profits for tax purposes? Just wondering what your accountant has asked for you to keep in regards to your online earnings, just incase you are auditted, and how you are going to play it out.

Yep we have a p/l company, we track earnings against losses, and I imagine we will pay tax on the profit, very much the way that professional punters, or book makers do. Have not completed a full year yet, but will keep you posted.

Pete


Oh and we keep a cash book like any other business.

Pete

What kind of tax do you pay? Capital gains tax or just standard income tax?

Income tax.

Pete

That's good. CGT can be such a pain.

With all this Stormpay fiasco, my concerns over tax dont matter any more.

SP and NETIBA were the biggest scams in this entire arena. It is ridiculous what SP are doing at the moment, it is straight out theft.

Whats the matter with us we were once so pleasantly lighthearted. Maybe next week.

Pete

I doubt I'll be feeling lighthearted next week Pete. Absolutely everything I had worked towards, and was now coming to fruition was all thru Stormpay. I've lost the lot.

Ouch...I remember some time back either Kenny or NUK mentioning that as well as spreading your risk in programs, you should also spread the risk with payment processors. With things going the way they are I guess they were right.

If it were neither you 2, let me know so I can find out who and give credit where credit is due...

I think it is easier to be light-hearted when you are on top. As they say 'love fly's out the window when you are poor'

Have any of you guys done credit pay chargebacks? I have just done this this morning, I wont recover it all, but somethings better than nothing.

Pete

How does that work? What kind of grounds do you need to claim a chargeback, and does it actually work?

I would like to know the same thing. I am thinking of putting a visa charge back but am not sure if it would work.

I'm guessing that credit card chargebacks would be relatively futile.

Credit card companies at least Visa and Mastercard offer chargebacks for a period of sixty days, if you have placed monety in an account like stormpay ( a third party processor) if the goods or services you have authorised them to pay for are not supplied. In the case of stormpay, they have accepted funds from my mastercard on the understanding that these funds will be used to purchase a product. In this case add credits.

The fact that they have knowingly accepted these funds, then frozen the various accounts, without providing compensation to the payee, is against the TOS required by merchants accepting the payments.

I have not had a result yet, but, this morning Master Card called me to say that they are working on the case, and I am not the only one.

Pete

Happy (belated) Australia Day!

Well, that is reassuring that the credit card company is actually taking action. I hope something can be resolved.

I have put in a form to Visa for a chargeback also - my poor bank didn't even know what a chargeback was until they rang Visa. Visa is supposed to contact me in a week to tell me what is happening.

I also never liked Stormpay and would never have opened an account if Alien Trust had taken another processor.

Life goes on...........................even though we are a bit poorer...........................................

I can only hope Visa comes to the rescue

Good luck with your charge-back. It will be interesting to see how the CC companies handle this, and to see if you *do* in fact receive some compensation.

The 12dp thread is full of people who have successfully made CC chargebacks, if you paid from your acc balance forget about it, if you have a CC charge, which immediately coincides with an upgrade payment as I understand it you have a 90% chance of recovery.

This does not neccessarily apply to debit cards or virtual Visa or Mastercards.

Pete



Great Avatar! You need to make your prescence felt in the Avatar Thread.
Oh and btw thanks, same to you.

Pete



Great Avatar! You need to make your prescence felt in the Avatar Thread.
Oh and btw thanks, same to you.

Pete

Heyo bodies.

" Heyo " to you, too.

Love the avatar

Good to see you out of the Plex thread, relax here, it will do you good.

Pete

G'day from Paris!

Can somebody email me some bloody Vegemite?? I'm dying out here!

keep ya bloody Vegemite, gimme Promite any day!

Take a trip across the channel to England. Most Siansbury's have it.

Vegemite, promite or marmite? I would have thought this would be the poll at the start of the Aussie thread

Hey guys, the Aussie Thread was on page 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We gotta keep this thread going....................anyway,I am starting to feel a bit better now, coming to terms with my losses. That feeling of helplessness and 'what am I going to do now' has started to dissipate, and I am feeling ready to move on.

Well, move on with what I have left After losing all my upgrades in various autosurfs, I am left with the grand payment of $100 per month from Dadndave's.

Not a lot, but it is something, more than a lot ended up with.

I hope the rest of you Aussies fared better than me, but whatever,we will all get through,and survive and be wiser for it.

One positive aspect I have found through all this,- it reinforces who the honest admins are! That can only be a good thing.

Cheryl