Visa Fee Increase from July 2017

Visa Application Charges (VACs) will change from 1 July 2017.

Government announced changes to present Visas Application Charges (VACs) after announcing the 2017-18 Budget last night.

According to this new information in table A, there is no high increase in fees (around 2 percent increase in each VAC round to nearest $5). One of the highest changes is $135 in Partner visas (From $6865 to $7000) and the lowest is $5 like Offshore Visitor visas (From $135 to $140).

Notably, as you can find in table B, the Temporary Sponsored Parent Visa which was announced in September 2016 and we provided information before, will commence in November 2017. There are two available options (3 years and 5 years). Government has considered the fee of $5000 for the 3 years Temporary Sponsored Parent Visa and $10,000 for 5 years Temporary Sponsored Parent Visa.

Also as announced before, the government announced on 18th of April 2017 that the current temporary business sponsored visas (subclass 457) will be abolished in March 2018 and will be replaced with the completely new Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa which will support businesses in addressing genuine skill shortages. In order to follow the policy, some new fees has been introduced and they are available in Table B. The introduced fees are in regards to the visa application fees (for instance $1150 for two years TSS visas and $2400 for four years TSS visas of main applicant) and new fees which should be paid by businesses when they want to sponsor an employee in either Temporary or Permanent visas (from $1200 to $1800 per year for temporary sponsored visas and flat $3000 to $5000 for Permanent visas). The Government called these fees ‘Skilling Australians Fund Levy’ and the fund will be used for training of Australians as announced with the Australian 2017-18 budget on 9th of May 2017.