The ABN question, and the business question

Last checked: 15 August 2026

Nothing in the 417 or 462 conditions stops you working for yourself. The rules that decide whether you can hold an ABN are tax rules, not visa rules, and they are stricter than most backpackers expect.

When you are entitled to an ABN

The Australian Business Register grants an ABN if you are carrying on or starting an enterprise in Australia. It asks questions when you apply to work out whether you are, and it can run an entitlement review at any time afterwards — at which point you have to produce evidence that you started, or took steps to start, the business from the date you claimed.

What it looks for in a business: a significant commercial activity involving real sales, of a reasonable size and scale; an intention to profit shown by a business plan rather than a hobby; activity that is repeated; activity that is systematic, organised, run in a business-like way with records kept; carried on the way others in the same industry carry it on; and relevant knowledge or skill on your part.

If you have not started trading, the ABR wants commencement activities: a website or social account for the business, business cards, licences or insurance, leasing or buying equipment or premises, issuing quotes or bidding for work, consulting an accountant, applying for finance. Not all of them. Some of them, with evidence you can hand over.

“Get an ABN and you can start Monday”

The ABR's own words: you are not entitled to an ABN for work you carry out as an employee — including as an apprentice, trade assistant or labourer — even if you or your employer calls it contracting. And then, in the same paragraph: an employer shouldn't ask you to get an ABN as a condition of employment.

That settles the offer. If the venue sets your roster, your hours and your rate, and you work with their equipment on their premises, you are an employee. The ABN just moves their costs onto you — no award rate, no penalty rates, no superannuation, no leave, no workers compensation — and the tax lands as one bill instead of coming out of each pay. Fair Work covers where the line sits. The ABR also warns you may face prosecution or criminal charges if you apply for an ABN, register for GST and claim refunds when you were not entitled.

Take the next application instead. Real hospitality employers pay wages, and get88 exists to put you in front of a few hundred of them.

Self-employment and the 6 month limit

Home Affairs deals with self-employment head on in its guidance on condition 8547. Among the ways to work past 6 months without asking permission it lists being self-employed and providing services to the same business for more than 6 months — as long as that business is not the only business you provide services to during that time.

Read the tail of that sentence twice. One client for seven months is the one-employer limit wearing a business name. Two or more and you are clear. The other exemptions are in the 6 month rule guide.

You have twelve months, not five years

A working holiday visa runs 12 months and is never extended. That shapes what is worth starting. Something portable — freelance work, a service you run off a laptop, anything that follows you to the next town — outlives the visa. Something that needs a lease, staff or a fit-out probably does not.

Whatever you start, close it properly. Cancel the ABN when you stop trading, cancel any GST registration with it, and lodge the final return before you fly out.

ABNs and businesses, answered

Whether any work counts toward the 88 days is a separate test with its own industry and postcode lists — see what counts as specified work. The rest of the rules are in the guides, and what get88 does is on the homepage.