Do you own a negatively geared investment property?
Your employer is required to withhold tax during the year to cover your estimated tax liability from your employment income. However, those who have a negatively geared property investment will have less taxable income than their employer estimated, due to their rental property loss offsetting their employment income. In these cases, the employee does their tax and gets a tax refund for the overpaid tax at the end of the year.
Have less tax withheld from your pay
Many people like to get a big tax refund at year end, but why wait for your refund? Why not get it now? The ATO allows you to do just that.
You can lodge a Pay As You Go (PAYG) Withholding Variation, which if accepted, will direct your employer to withhold less tax from your pay and give more cash to you during the year. This is an efficient tax strategy that can free up extra cash sooner to reduce debt, put into your offset account or re-invest.
In particular, people who have several properties which are significantly negatively geared may find it difficult to make ends meet if they don’t use a strategy such as this to manage their cashflow.
Get your figures right
The only trap is that you need to be accurate in your variation estimate otherwise you may have to pay penalty interest on the extra tax that you kept from the ATO. An accurate estimate can be made using your current rental return, current interest rate and estimated expenses combined with advice from your accountant.
If you would like to submit a PAYG Variation or have any questions regarding this option, you can speak with Sarah Tobias or myself, the Property Tax Champions.
