Working holiday jobs in Australia: what they pay and how to get one

On a 417 or a 462 you count as a "working holiday maker" for tax, and there's a separate table for you. The big difference from most home countries is that there's no tax-free threshold. Tax starts at the first dollar.

In practice almost everyone stays under AU$45,000 in a tax year and pays a flat 15%. The Australian tax year runs from 1 July to 30 June. Land in January and a year's earnings get split across two tax years, which makes staying under the line close to automatic.

The trap is the tax file number. Without a TFN your employer has to withhold 45%, starting with your first shift. The money isn't gone, and you get it back through your tax return. But you're waiting until after 30 June for it, and in the meantime almost half of every payslip is missing. How to apply online in about twenty minutes is in our TFN and IRD guide.

If your payslip shows 30% coming off instead of 15%, look at the employer, not the table. The 15% rate is for employers registered with the ATO as employers of working holiday makers. One that hasn't registered has to withhold 30% from every dollar, and can be penalised for skipping the registration. Ask them to sort it. Your tax return settles the difference either way. Until then, an extra 15% of every week sits with the ATO instead of with you.

Here's what the 15% leaves you at the entry casual rate.

Superannuation is Australia's compulsory retirement saving, and it's paid on top of your wage, never taken out of it. The rate has been 12% since 1 July 2025 and stays there for 2026–27. Since 1 July 2026 employers have to pay it every payday instead of once a quarter. For you that mostly means the amount now appears on every payslip, so you'll notice straight away if it's missing. If it is, that's a job for the ATO. The Fair Work Ombudsman handles pay and conditions but says plainly that unpaid super isn't something it can help with.

When you leave Australia for good, you can claim your super back as a departing Australia superannuation payment. Less comes back than most people hope: on a working holiday visa, 65% of it is withheld as tax. Of AU$3,000 in your fund, you'd see about AU$1,050. It's still worth the paperwork, since nobody else is going to claim it for you. How the claim works and what you need for it is in our super and tax back guide.

One more practical point about where the money goes. Your wages need a local Australian account, and you'll want that sorted in week one. What that local account won't do cheaply is move money between currencies, in either direction.

Insurance isn't a condition of the 417 or the 462, and nobody checks for it at the airport. That's a real difference from New Zealand, and it's why plenty of people arrive without any.

Here that's a gamble. Australia has reciprocal healthcare agreements with only eleven countries: Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Germany, France, Canada and the United States aren't among them, so an ambulance and a night in hospital reach you as a bill. Even where an agreement exists, it pays for medically necessary treatment, not for everything.

The job itself is covered separately. Under Australian law every employer has to hold workers' compensation insurance for injuries and illness caused by work, and that covers you as an employee. It stops at the end of the shift, though. The weekend hike, the scooter, the appendix that picks a Tuesday: none of that is a work injury. And if someone has talked you onto an ABN, you may not count as an employee at all.

So you're really buying cover for everything outside the job, and the catch is in the fine print. A lot of cheap travel policies exclude manual work outright. Some that include it still carve out machinery or working at height. Read the wording against the actual job you're about to take, not the summary on the sales page.

A working holiday visa runs for 12 months. To get a second one, you need 88 calendar days of "specified work", done while you held the first visa. For a third year it's 179 days, done on the second. Specified work means particular industries in particular postcodes. On a 417 that's plant and animal cultivation (which covers most farm work), fishing and pearling, tree farming, mining and construction in regional Australia, plus tourism and hospitality in northern and remote Australia, and recovery work in declared bushfire and disaster areas. The 462 list is shorter, and some of it only counts up north. Which postcode counts for which job is what our 88 days postcode checker answers, faster than reading the Home Affairs tables by eye.

The counting is where people come unstuck. Home Affairs treats the 88 days as two conditions, not one. The work has to span at least three calendar months. And inside that span you need as many working days or shifts as a full-time worker in that job would do. Its own example is a vineyard worker doing two days a week from February to April. Three months, eligible work, correct pay, and it still doesn't count, because two days a week isn't full-time. You're allowed to spread the days over a longer stretch and across several employers. You're not allowed to squeeze them into less than three months.

Two more rules sit on the same page. The work has to be paid according to Australian law and the relevant award, so an underpaid job can cost you the second year as well as the money. And for now Home Affairs is taking a flexible view of jobs that support a specified industry, such as office or cleaning work for a farm business in an eligible postcode.

On a UK passport, none of this applies to you. British citizens who apply for a second or third 417 on or after 1 July 2024 don't need specified work at all.

Most farms sit well outside any public transport, and a harvest town rarely has a bus leaving at 6am. Some working hostels drive guests out to the farms, so ask whether that's included before you book. Without a lift, you need a car. For a single six-week season, hiring is often cheaper than buying one you then have to sell in a country town. Which regions pick what, and when, is in our harvest calendar.

Everything on this page applies to you exactly as it does to an Australian. Workplace law doesn't care which passport you hold. The minimum wage, your award rate, the casual loading, penalty rates and super are yours from the first day, and no agreement can go below them. Not one you signed. Not one you agreed to out loud.

Four patterns catch most people, and all four look harmless at first.

A round hourly rate. "Twenty-five dollars an hour, cash in hand" can sound fine if you've come from somewhere with lower wages. It's below every award rate on this page, and on a weekend it's far below. Round numbers are the most common warning sign, because award rates almost never are. A job ad isn't even allowed to advertise a rate that breaks the award.

No payslip. You're entitled to one within one working day of being paid. No payslip usually means no super, no tax passed on to the ATO, and nothing in your hand later. For the 88 days it's fatal, because payslips are the first thing Home Affairs wants to see.

The unpaid trial shift. The only unpaid trial allowed is a short, supervised demonstration of your skills, like making a few coffees. Once you're doing real work, serving customers or cleaning or stacking shelves, it's a shift and it gets paid. A whole unpaid shift isn't a test. It's wage theft.

"You'll need an ABN." An Australian Business Number is for people running their own business. If you're pushed onto one for a job where someone else sets your shifts, tells you what to do and hands you the equipment, it's very likely sham contracting. You lose the award, penalty rates, super and workers' compensation, and the tax becomes your problem.

Two things that aren't about pay, and should still set off alarms. An employer can look at your passport but is not allowed to keep it. And no employer can cancel your visa, whatever they threaten. Only Home Affairs can do that.

One last point that catches people every year. The worst time to sort any of this out is the day you try to prove your 88 days. An employer who never gave you payslips can't produce useful evidence afterwards, and Home Affairs can contact your employers directly. What counts as proof is in our farm work and 88 days guide.