Going Overseas? Here’s What to Do With All Your Stuff

So you’re off. New country, new job, new life. Exciting stuff. And then you walk into your living room and reality lands with a thud: what on earth do you do with all of it? The couch. The fridge. The slightly-too-large dining table you swore you’d never get rid of.

You can’t take it all, and you don’t want to torch your savings shipping a wardrobe halfway around the planet. Good news: you’ve got options. Let’s run through them, smallest to biggest, because the biggest one has a tax sting most people never see coming.

Option 1: Sell it

For most of your bits and pieces, selling is the simplest answer. Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree have largely taken over from the old eBay listings for furniture, and the trick is to start early. Photograph things in decent light, write an honest description, price them to actually move, and you’ll be surprised how quickly a flurry of strangers turns your spare room into spare cash.

Start a month or two out. Leave it to the final week and you’ll be giving away a perfectly good washing machine to the first person who shows up with a ute.

Option 2: Store it

If you’re confident you’ll be back before too long, storage can make sense. The honest test is the maths: storage fees add up month after month, so if you’re going to be gone for years, you can easily pay more to store a second-hand lounge than it would cost to simply buy a new one when you return.

One way to trim the cost is to choose a fixed, sealed storage unit you don’t need regular access to, rather than the come-and-go-as-you-please self-storage option. You’re paying for convenience with the latter, and if your gear is going to sit untouched for two years, you don’t need it.

Option 3: Ship it

Yes, you can ship the lot overseas. It’s also the most expensive and most painful option on this list. Sea freight for the contents of even a modest apartment can run into several thousand dollars, and it can take months to arrive by boat, during which you’re sleeping on a borrowed mattress and eating off a single plate.

Get a few quotes before you commit, and do the cold, hard sum: unless your furniture is genuinely valuable or irreplaceable, it is almost always cheaper and far less stressful to sell up here and start fresh once you land. Sentimental items and the heirloom dresser, sure. The flat-pack bookshelf you assembled with three screws missing? Let it go.

Option 4: Rent out the house (and read this part carefully)

Now for the big one. If you own your home, you might not want to sell it just because you’re leaving. Renting it out lets you hang onto a valuable asset and earn an income from it while you’re away, instead of leaving it to sit there idle. On paper, lovely.

But here’s where people get themselves into strife, because the tax treatment of your old family home changes the moment you start renting it and the moment you leave the country. This is exactly the stuff worth getting right.

You’ll pay tax on the rent

Rental income is taxable in Australia, and as a non-resident you’ll need to keep lodging an Australian tax return to declare it. You’re taxed on your net rental profit, which is the rent you receive minus the deductible costs of running the place: council and water rates, insurance, mortgage interest, repairs, body corporate fees, property management fees and the like. Depending upon the country that you are moving to, you may also have to declare the rent you receive and your property expenses in your tax return in your new country.

Two traps here. First, since 1 July 2017 you can no longer claim travel expenses to inspect or maintain a residential rental property, so forget about deducting the flight home to “check on the place”. Second, also from 1 July 2017, you generally can’t claim depreciation on second-hand plant and equipment (think the previous owner’s dishwasher or air conditioner) in a residential rental. And don’t forget the bigger sting: as a non-resident you get no tax-free threshold, so your rental profit is taxed from the very first dollar, starting at 30 per cent for the 2025 to 2026 year.

The capital gains trap that catches expats

This is the one the old version of this article got wrong, and it’s worth understanding properly.

Normally your main residence is exempt from capital gains tax when you sell. There’s also a generous “absence rule” that lets you move out, rent the place for up to six years, and still treat it as your main residence so it stays CGT-free (and indefinitely if you don’t rent it out). You can only ever have one main residence at a time, but as long as you haven’t nominated another property, that’s the rule Australians have relied on for years.

Here’s the catch for expats. Since 1 July 2020, if you sell while you are a foreign resident for tax purposes, you generally cannot claim the main residence exemption at all. Not even a partial slice for the years you actually lived there. The thing that matters is your tax residency status at the moment of sale, not when you bought or lived in it. So if you move overseas, become a non-resident, and sell the house while you’re away, that lovely absence rule may give you precisely nothing. There are narrow exceptions under what’s called the “life events test” (things like terminal illness, death of a spouse or child, or a relationship breakdown), and only if you’ve been a foreign resident for six years or less.

The practical upshot is blunt. If you might sell, the difference between selling before you leave (while you’re still a resident) and selling after (while you’re a non-resident) can be tens of thousands of dollars. This is a “measure twice, cut once” decision, and it’s worth proper advice before you book the removalists.

And the withholding at sale

One more to know. Since 1 January 2025, when a foreign resident sells Australian property, the buyer is legally required to withhold 15 per cent of the sale price and send it to the ATO, unless you’ve obtained a clearance certificate first. You can claim it back through your tax return if too much was withheld, but it means a big chunk of your sale proceeds is parked with the tax office in the meantime. Sort the paperwork early.

The bottom line

Sorting your stuff is the easy part. Sell the small things, store or ship the few that are worth it, and be ruthless about the rest. The house is where the real money is, and where the real mistakes happen. Renting it out can be a smart move, but the tax on the rent, the deductions you can and can’t claim, and especially the capital gains hit if you sell at the wrong moment all deserve a proper look before you go, not a panicked phone call from the other side of the world afterwards.

Sort your tax before you fly

Every costly expat tax mistake we see started as a small question nobody asked in time. Don’t let your house become one of them. We’re Australian tax specialists who work with expats every single day, and a single appointment now can save you a fortune later.

Book an appointment and let’s get you sorted before you go.

Disclaimer: This article is general information only and does not take your personal circumstances into account. It is not tax, financial or legal advice, and should not be relied on as such. Tax outcomes depend heavily on individual facts, and the rules and figures described here can change. The figures quoted were current as at June 2026. Before making any decision about your property or belongings, please seek advice from a registered Australian tax agent about your specific situation.

References

Australian Taxation Office, “Rental properties and travel expenses” (travel to inspect or maintain a residential rental property not deductible from 1 July 2017). Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/investments-and-assets/residential-rental-properties/rental-expenses-you-can-t-claim/rental-properties-and-travel-expenses

Australian Taxation Office, “Rental expenses” (limit on deductions for the decline in value of second-hand depreciating assets from 1 July 2017). Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/forms-and-instructions/rental-properties-2025/rental-expenses

Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Tax Integrity) Act 2017 (Cth), which introduced the travel expense and second-hand depreciating asset restrictions for residential rental properties.

Australian Taxation Office, “Main residence exemption for foreign residents” (foreign residents generally cannot claim the exemption for property sold after 30 June 2020 unless the life events test applies, with no partial exemption). Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/investments-and-assets/capital-gains-tax/foreign-residents-and-capital-gains-tax/main-residence-exemption-for-foreign-residents

Treasury Laws Amendment (Reducing Pressure on Housing Affordability Measures) Act 2019 (Cth), No. 129 of 2019, which removed the main residence CGT exemption for foreign residents. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019A00129

Australian Taxation Office, “Your residency status and CGT” (the 50% CGT discount is generally not available to foreign residents for the period of foreign residency after 8 May 2012). Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/investments-and-assets/capital-gains-tax/foreign-residents-and-capital-gains-tax/your-residency-status-and-cgt

Australian Taxation Office, “Foreign residents and capital gains tax” (foreign resident capital gains withholding of 15% from 1 January 2025). Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/investments-and-assets/capital-gains-tax/foreign-residents-and-capital-gains-tax

Australian Taxation Office, “Tax rates – foreign resident” (foreign residents have no tax-free threshold). Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/tax-rates-and-codes/tax-rates-foreign-residents