How to maximise investment property tax deductions

You must invest in residential property primarily to benefit from the power of compounding capital growth. Any tax benefits (negative gearing) are merely a positive consequence of this investment, not the reason for it. That said, of course it makes sense to maximise your taxation deductions wherever possible.  

Make it easy for yourself

Maintaining accurate and complete taxation records is necessary to ensure all tax deductions are captured and treated correctly.  

I encourage my clients to utilise their property managers services to make record keeping as simple as possible. This involves asking your property manager to pay for all property specific related expenses on your behalf. For example, if you receive a bill, forward it to your property manager and request they pay it. You may need to transfer some money into their trust account if there’s not enough rental income to pay for it, but that’s not a big deal. In fact, having your bills mailed/emailed directly to your property manager streamlines this approach.  

The advantage of getting your property manager to pay for all expenses is that it will be recorded in the end-of-financial-year income and expense summary that they will provide you. At the end of the financial year, you just need to provide your accountant two pieces of information: (1) the rental summary and (2) a summary of interest and bank fees. This makes record keeping very simple.  

Summary of most common tax deductions 

The ATO publishes taxation statistics for each tax year (the most recent data is from the 2018/19 tax year). This data covers the 2.8 million investment properties that are owned by 2.2 million taxpayers. The most common tax deductions were:  

 | Deduction expense | Proportion of total deductions
 | Interest on loans  | 47%
 | Capital works deduction  | 8%
 | Council Rates | 7%
 | Property Agent fees/commission | 6%
 | Plant depreciation | 6%
 | Repairs and maintenance | 6%
 | Body Corporate Fees  | 5%
 | Water charges | 4%
 | Insurance | 3%
 | Land tax | 3%
 | Other inc. cleaning, garden, adverting, etc. | 5%

Source: ATO 

Interest and bank fees 

Interest and mortgage related fees will likely be your biggest tax deduction so it’s critical that you ensure its complete and accurate. I wrote this blog in 2020 which lists ten rules to follow to ensure you maximise your interes

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