482 self-sponsorship: can your own business sponsor you, and what the Department tests

MARN 1576536

Why a company and not a sole trader

A sponsorship has two parties: the sponsor, which must be a business, and the nominee, who must be a person the sponsor employs. A sole trader is the business and the person at once, so a sole trader cannot nominate themselves; there is no employer and no employee. A company is a separate legal person. It can be approved as a Standard Business Sponsor, nominate a position, and employ its own director in that position on a salary, and the director can be the visa applicant. Partnerships and trusts with corporate trustees raise their own questions about who the employer is, and the structure is checked before anything is lodged. The company must be lawfully operating: registered, with an ABN, trading, with accounts and a bank account that show real activity. A company incorporated last month with no customers is a shelf company for this purpose, whatever its plans.

What is tested

• Sponsorship approval. The company applies to be a Standard Business Sponsor on the same criteria as any business: lawful operation, no adverse information, a commitment to training. The approved sponsor guide covers it.
• Genuine position. The role must be a full-time position that exists because the business needs it, with duties that match the nominated occupation, and that would be filled by someone if not by you. A business with one customer does not need a full-time manager; a business turning over enough to pay a chef needs a chef.
• Occupation and salary. The occupation must be on the Core Skills Occupation List or the role paid at least the Specialist Skills threshold, A$146,576 from 1 July 2026. The salary must be at least the Core Skills Income Threshold, A$79,423, and no less than an Australian would be paid for the same role.
• Capacity to pay. The business must show from its own income that it can pay the salary and its other costs. Accounts, business activity statements and bank statements are read for this. Salary funded by the nominee's own capital put into the company is the recurring reason these nominations fail.
• Labour market testing. The role must have been advertised to the Australian market for the required period in the required way before the nomination, unless an exemption applies. The advertising has to be real, and so does the consideration of any Australian who applied.
• You. One year of relevant experience at the required skill level, a skills assessment where the Department requires one, English, health and character, on the same footing as any 482 applicant.

The extra scrutiny

Where the nominee owns or controls the sponsor, the Department asks the questions it would ask of any nomination, and then asks whether the business is being used to obtain a visa rather than the visa being used to staff a business. It looks at when the company was formed relative to the application, where its capital came from, whether it has customers and staff who are not the nominee, whether the salary is actually paid and taxed, whether the nominee's role is the one described or is in truth owner-manager, and whether the business could survive without the nominee. None of these is a rule; together they are the lens. A business that answers them in documents without being asked is the one that is approved.

Where these applications fail

• The company was formed shortly before the application and has little or no trading history.
• The salary is paid from money the nominee put into the company, or is not paid at all between lodgement and decision.
• The nominated occupation is a managerial title for what is in substance a sole operator: a café with one worker nominating a Café or Restaurant Manager, a consultancy with one client nominating a Management Consultant.
• Labour market testing was done in form only, or an Australian who applied was not considered.
• The business plan is the evidence, rather than the accounts.
• The nominee is already working in the business on a visa that did not permit it, which is disclosed by the very records the nomination relies on.

A refusal on the genuine position ground can be reviewed at the Tribunal by the sponsor, and the refusal guide covers what fixes it: genuine position refusals.

The sequence and the timing

The order is fixed: the business operates and trades; the company applies for sponsorship approval; the role is advertised; the nomination is lodged; the visa is applied for. The trading history is the slow part, and it cannot be compressed, which is why the plan is built backward from the date the visa you hold now ends. A person on a 485 with two years left can build a business that supports a nomination; a person on a visitor visa with three months cannot, and should hear that early rather than after the company has been incorporated. Where the business is already established and the owner holds a visa that allows the work, the sponsorship and nomination stages can run together and the timeline is months rather than years.

Permanent residence

The company that sponsored you for the 482 can nominate you for the permanent 186 through the Temporary Residence Transition stream after two years with it in the nominated occupation, or directly through the Direct Entry stream if you have three years' experience and a skills assessment. The nomination is tested again for genuineness and capacity, and the business has to have kept paying the salary, lodged its returns and met its sponsorship obligations throughout. The two years are the evidence that the first nomination was genuine.

When it does not fit

Self-sponsorship is one route among several, and often not the best one. A person who qualifies for a points-tested visa does not need a sponsor at all. A business in regional Australia may fit a labour agreement or a DAMA with concessions the standard 482 lacks. A person with an exceptional record looks at the National Innovation visa. And an established business owner may find that employing and sponsoring someone else, while taking their own visa by another route, is the structure that survives scrutiny. Business migration in 2026 sets out what remains after the BIIP closure; the consultation puts your facts against each.

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General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case. Thresholds are the Department of Home Affairs figures from 1 July 2026. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.