The bill that turns up five years later

Good morning,

Tax is the question I get asked more than anything else. I have been trying to get Tim Pullman on the show for years, and this week he finally sat down.

Tim is a chartered accountant in Adelaide who works with professional athletes on tax, structuring, and planning for life after sport.

Here is how that happens. The foreign tax office had been writing to the club. The club never forwarded a thing. By the time the ATO made contact, penalties and interest had almost matched the original bill. Getting specialist lawyers onto it in that country cost around $25,000, with no guarantee it works.

That is the horror story. The part that stuck with me was smaller and far more common.

A net contract in India looks clean. Tax is paid at source, roughly 23 to 24%, and there is nothing left to think about. But the season runs September to April, so the family usually stays in Australia. If they do, you are probably still an Australian tax resident, and the top marginal rate plus Medicare sits at 45% above $190,000. There is another 20% waiting on a number you have already spent.

Residency is not your passport. It is where your life actually is, and a partner or a child left at home can keep you filing here for the whole contract.

The fix is boring and it works. Before you sign, know where you are a tax resident, know who is actually paying the tax, and know who is checking.

Watch the full episode now:

The US dollar was sold hard on Friday. July retail sales came in short, and after a week of soft inflation data the market moved to price a Fed hold in September at roughly 70%. The dollar index, which had been pinned just under 100 all week, gave way.

Everything on the other side of it went up. The Australian dollar finished at 0.7083, an eight-week high, with traders eyeing 0.7100. Sterling hit three-month peaks near 1.3560. The euro pushed to two-month highs in the upper 1.15s, its best level since mid-June. On the cross, sterling closed at 1.9102 against the Australian dollar.

Australia is the other half of that story. The RBA held at 4.35% for a second meeting, unanimously, and Governor Bullock made clear another rise is still live if inflation does not cool. Markets are pricing about a 54% chance of a move to 4.60% by December. A higher cash rate at home tends to mean a firmer Australian dollar.

Which is exactly the problem if you are earning abroad and sending money home. A stronger Australian dollar means the same contract arrives as less.

Here is the arithmetic on a US$1 million salary, using this year's actual high and low.

Same contract, same salary. A gap of A$82,561 between the best and the worst level this year, decided by nothing except when the money moved.

It runs the same way in sterling. GBP/AUD has traded between 1.8553 and 2.0185 in 2026. On a £250,000 salary that range is a A$40,800 swing.

None of that is a forecast. It is a range that has already happened. The only variable that mattered was whether a plan was in place before the market moved. A forward contract fixes the rate on money you have already agreed to receive. A limit order sits above the market and fills on its own when your number arrives.

Two things to keep an eye on. The Fed minutes land this week. And the Strait of Hormuz is still effectively shut, with 14 vessels crossing on Tuesday against something near 120 a day before the war, which is why Brent is holding around $87 and why the dollar keeps finding a bid every time the headlines turn.

The transfer window you cannot control. The rate you can.

That is it for this week.

If any of this lands close to where you are right now, a contract coming up, a transfer to manage, or a first move abroad you are trying to plan properly, reply and tell me. I read every one.

Chris

SportsFX.
Currency strategy for professional sport.