Empower Blog Tax

Seven Property Investment Myths Keeping You From Growing

Investing in property can be a bit frightening if you are unfamiliar with what it entails. When considering it, realise that properties can generally be categorised into two groups: active or passive investments. Active investment requires the investors to be on the run and this could be buying a house, fixing it up and then selling it for a profit...

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The Top 3 Myths of Financial Planning

So one of the key myths of Financial Planning is that our role is to minimise your tax or reduce your tax bill. The reality is our job is certainly a lot larger than that. It's about looking at the long term objectives, how do we position your portfolio, your investments and your savings to achieve that. Tax is simply a by-product of that. And the ...

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The era of entitlement IS OVER – What can be done?

Joe Hockey delivered the nation’s 2014 Federal Budget last Tuesday. He was true to his word about it being a tough budget and based on the changes they want to push through the senate and bring into law, it certainly didn’t miss any of us, as their catch cry stated “we are all in this together”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it agai...

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What is a Tax Depreciation Schedule?

Depreciation is tax deduction for property investors. We invest in property to increase our wealth over time. One thing that we need to do is make sure we claim everything that we are able to claim, one of those thing being depreciation. Items in a property are wearing out over time, the buildings will one day fall over I guess and so the tax offic...

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What are the Risks of investing in Residential Property

We can all get really excited about the prospects of creating a great passive income out of property. But one of the big things when we look at 2014 and we see all the hype around property investment is there’s still actual risk involved in investing in property. So today I wanted to share a moment with you in this time and talk about the risks t...

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John Maynard Keynes – does that name ring a bell for you?

Well if you are someone who has studied economics, it will definitely ring a bell.  Those who haven’t well, this English Economist was influential in helping the world get through the Great Depression, by convincing governments to use fiscal and monetary stimulus to kick-start the global economy with his macro-economic theory around business cyc...

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The 7 Biggest Property Investment Mistakes

If I were to ask you what do you feel more comfortable with, investing in shares or property? The majority of people would say property.  The reason for this is because property is something that we all have experienced in our lives, so naturally we automatically assume we understand it better than shares or managed funds.  Shares on the other h...

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Stamp Duty; friend or foe?

There is a lot of news in the media right now about Stamp Duty on the Transfer of Land. For a buyer, the cost of stamp duty is a significant upfront cost when buying property. We often get asked by the media about stamp duty and how Australians (and in particular, Melburnians) feel about it. It was an interesting topic to discuss because many poi...

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ATO Ruling on Interest Capitalisation

After earlier releasing a draft ruling on interest capitalisation the ATO has finally released its ruling: TD 2012/1. In property investing terms, interest capitalisation is where a person or entity is claiming interest costs on top of the original interest costs and instead of paying the original interest the borrower is paying down other non-d...

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Property Market ‘Too Important to Fail’

Imagine a situation where what you’re investing in, is also so critical to the overall economy in which that investment is found, that if it failed it would severely cripple the economy and standard of living of its population. You don’t really have to imagine too hard, because that is exactly the situation we have in the Australian market. ...

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The Cost of Interest

What is the largest single amount of money you expect to part with in your life?  For most families, a family home will probably be the largest single purchase they will make in their lives.  But while the actual purchase price you pay for a house may be the biggest amount of money you spend in a single lump sum, there is likely to be another cos...

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PAYG Withholding Variation Option

In simplistic terms this means the ATO is happy to help you from a cash flow point of view in meeting your money needs throughout the course of the new financial year. Michael Pope—Empower Wealth’s Money & Wealth Planner thinks it’s a real positive for investors. “Most people opt to get a nice little bonus come tax return time, bu...

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Developing Property and GST

In a recent case at the Federal Commissioner of Taxation, Administrative Appeals Tribunal a taxpayer was fined over $160,000 for failing to disclose the sale of new townhouses in their business activity statement. If you are building a property with the intention of selling the property for a profit, then you are required to register and charge GST...

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