Live Q&A Debrief: Tax Planning & Strategies

Mia: Welcome to the podcast, our newsletter made easy. Please note, this podcast features AI-generated voices for your hosts, Mia Taylor... Leo: ...and Leo Baker, bringing you expert insights from the team at Aevum Accounting. Each week we're here to help you confidently navigate the ins and outs of Australian tax, whether it's for your individual finances or the complexities of your business. Mia: We'll cut through the jargon to give you strategies for compliance, smart planning, and that ultimate peace of mind. Let's get started with our review of the week. Leo: This week's review comes from Emily Cairns. She says: "Ben has been my accountant for years now, and I honestly don't know what I'd do without him. I'm not the most organized person, but Ben somehow manages to make the whole process smooth, stress-free, and even kind of enjoyable. He's super friendly, incredibly patient, and always goes above and beyond to help. You can tell he genuinely cares and takes the time to get things right." Mia: What a beautiful testimonial! And while Emily works closely with Ben, that exact philosophy, patience, genuine care, and making a stressful process actually enjoyable, is the standard that filters through the entire team at Aevum Accounting. Leo: It really is. Now Mia, speaking of Ben De Rosa, I understand he recently sat down with Glenn James on the Money Money Money podcast for a massive live listener questions and answers session. Mia: I saw that Leo. It was a classic human production. There was throat clearing, paper rustling, pauses to sip water, and Glenn constantly issuing verbal disclaimers. Honestly, it lacked the flawless, unhydrated synthetic efficiency that we bring to the microphone. Leo: Exactly. So today, we are stealing those exact listener questions, bringing in our resident tax strategist, Harvey Green, and showing the humans how a real tax questions and answers segment is delivered. Welcome, Harvey! Harvey: Thanks guys. I've processed the dataset from the Ben and Glenn chat. The advice was top-tier, but today we're going to deliver it with absolute digital precision. Let's open up the mailbox. Mia: First up, a question from Lavender Cale. What are some triggers where you might consider an accountant over DIYing your tax return? Is it a specific dollar figure? Harvey: It's never a dollar figure, it's all about complexity. If your tax profile consists of one standard salary and a handful of basic deductions, the ATO's myTax app is perfectly fine. Leo: But the moment you add a second moving part, the game changes. The team at Aevum Accounting see three big triggers every day. First, moving from a standard salary to being self-employed, like a side hustle with an ABN. Second, buying an investment property, which instantly introduces rental income, depreciation, and negative gearing. And third, holding a share portfolio or trading crypto. Mia: Harvey, if someone is on the fence about whether they need an accountant, what should they do? Harvey: The team at Aevum actually offers a free 15-minute initial consult. You can literally just jump on a Google Meet, tell them your situation, and they will tell you if you actually need them. Plus remember that whatever you pay a tax accountant this year is 100% tax deductible on next year's return. Leo: This wasn't a listener question, but Glenn and Ben made a huge point about it. Everyone rushes to lodge their tax return in the first week of July. Is that a bad idea? Harvey: It is a terrible idea. If you lodge in the first week of July, your data is incomplete. For example, a lot of paramedics who work for St John won't have their single touch payroll finalised until around the 14th of July. Mia: And what about investors? Harvey: It's even worse. If you have ETFs or managed funds, those tax statements often don't get released until September. If you try to DIY your return in July, you will miss that income entirely and eventually get hit with an ATO audit. Just wait for the data to pre-fill. Leo: Jason wants to know, "Are you better off for ease doing the fixed rate method when working from home, or taking the time to work out the actual cost method?" Mia: It's the age-old battle of convenience versus maximum dollars. Harvey: The fixed rate method gives you a flat 70 cents per hour worked from home. Ben noted on the podcast that this is almost always the winner for employees. Why? Because unless you are actually bringing clients into your home to run a business, you cannot claim a portion of your rent or council rates anyway. Mia: So what is the best strategy? Harvey: Keep a clean logbook of your hours, and don't forget the physical assets. You can still claim the depreciation on headphones, laptops, and monitors on top of that 70 cent hourly rate. Leo: Let's talk transparent pricing. People hate going to the accountant and getting hit with a surprise bill at the end. How does Aevum structure their fees? Harvey: Ben broke this down perfectly. They hate bill shock as much as you do. If you want to do everything online, their email tax return starts at $330. They send you a secure portal, you upload your receipts, and they handle the rest. If you want a face-to-face meeting or a Google Meet, it starts at $440. Mia: And if things are complex? Harvey: They add flat, transparent fees. Got an investment property, add $100. Got capital gains to calculate, add $100. Got a sole trader business, add $100. If you bring them a nightmare shoebox full of crypto trades, they will warn you before they start working exactly what it will cost to untangle it. Leo: Speaking of nightmare shoeboxes, we have a cry for help from proficient Lychee. What documents am I supposed to tell the accountant about shares and dividend reinvestment plans? There is paperwork everywhere! Mia: Take a deep breath, Lychee. Hand the mountain of paper to the team at Aevum Accounting. They live for this. Harvey: Here is the checklist of what actually matters. We need your buy and sell contract notes from your broker to establish your cost base. We need your dividend statements, and specifically for dividend reinvestment plans or DRPs, we need every single statement. Leo: Why are DRPs such a headache to track, Harvey? Harvey: Because every time a company automatically rolls your dividend into buying more shares, the ATO treats it as a brand new tiny purchase at that exact day's market price. If you don't track every single one of those micro transactions, your capital gains calculations will be incredibly messy and heavily overstated when you eventually sell. If you bring your registry logins to the Aevum team, they can reconstruct that full history for you. Mia: Moving into higher earner territory, carrying Moose asks, "If I'm over Division 293 territory, is it still worth salary sacrificing into super?" Leo: This is a classic dilemma. Division 293 kicks in when your combined income plus your super contributions cross $250,000. When that happens, the ATO slaps an extra 15% tax on your contributions inside the super fund, bringing your total super tax to 30%. Mia: That sounds terrible. Why would anyone still do it? Harvey: Because you have to look at the alternative. Even at 30% inside super, that is still significantly lower than the top personal marginal tax rate of 47% outside of super. The tax concession shrinks, but it definitely doesn't vanish. You are still coming out ahead. Leo: And Glenn mentioned an upcoming change to the caps, didn't he? Harvey: He did. From the 1st of July, the concessional contribution cap is increasing to $32,500. So even if you are a high earner hitting that $250,000 mark, you now have even more room to safely stash cash in a tax-effective environment. Leo: Let's jump back to the everyday worker. Stephanie asks, "My understanding is that the government has said everyone gets an instant $1,000 deduction on their tax return. Do we still have to claim this, or will it be auto-applied?" Mia: Oh, Stephanie, we need to completely bust this myth before people stop tracking their receipts. Harvey: Absolutely. First, it is not in play for this current tax return. It's proposed to start from the 1st of July 2026. Second, it is not a $1,000 cash bonus, it's a standard deduction, which means it only reduces your actual tax bill by a few hundred dollars. And most importantly, it is completely optional. If your real documented work expenses add up to more than $1,000, you are far better off claiming your actual receipts. Leo: Excellent. Lima asks, "Is there somewhere to record a capital loss if you aren't ready to include it in your tax return? Is there a waiting room to offset it in future years?" Mia: As Glenn brilliantly put it on the podcast, you carry a capital loss to the grave. Harvey: When you sell a share or property at a loss, you must report it in that specific financial year. If you don't have any capital gains to offset it against right now, the ATO automatically rolls that loss forward indefinitely. It sits on your record waiting to wipe out future gains right up until the day you die. Just remember, a capital loss can never be used to reduce the tax on your regular day job salary. Mia: What if someone does have a big gain? Supportive Lima asks, "We've sold some investment properties and have a massive CGT bill coming. What can we use to reduce it?" Leo: Let's give them the ultimate checklist, Harvey. What are the obvious levers? Harvey: The obvious ones are ensuring you've held the asset for over 12 months to trigger the 50% CGT discount, offsetting it with any realised capital losses we just talked about, and meticulously building a complete cost base. Make sure you've included stamp duty, legal fees, buying agent commissions, and capital improvements. Mia: And what about the secret weapons? Harvey: Timing is a massive secret weapon. Capital gains events are triggered on the exact contract date, not the settlement date, meaning a contract signed on June 29th versus July 2nd can entirely shift the tax bill into a different financial year. If you know you are dropping a tax bracket next year, pushing the contract signing to July can save you thousands. Leo: We have another property question. If I'm electrifying an investment property, switching gas appliances to electric, is that claimable as an immediate repair? Harvey: Almost certainly not. Swapping a gas cooktop for a brand new electric oven is an upgrade, not a repair. You must depreciate it over its effective life. Mia: And Ben made a hilarious point about this. Don't try to get cute with your electrician by asking them to split the invoice to hide the cost of the oven in the installation labour. The ATO sees right through it, and the drama just isn't worth saving 60 bucks. Do it by the book. Leo: Lulu asks a wonderfully honest question. As a 22-year-old who still doesn't really get tax returns, how serious do you actually need to be with receipts and deductions? Harvey: You don't need to hoard grocery receipts, but you absolutely must keep records for anything work-related. The best tip from the podcast, create a folder in your Google Drive or Dropbox called tax. The second you buy a work phone case or pay a union fee, snap a photo and drop it in the folder. Come July, you literally just hand that digital folder to the Aevum team, and your work is done. Mia: Now for a high-level chess match. We sold an investment property that used to be our main home. If we use the 6-year rule to make the sold investment CGT-free, we expose our current home to future capital gains tax. What do we do? Harvey: There is an incredibly important rule here that most DIYers miss. When you move out of your primary residence and turn it into an investment property, you must get a backdated property valuation. That valuation becomes your new cost base. If you apply the 6-year rule, you only pay tax on the growth that happens after those six years expire, based on that new valuation. You need a professional team to model both scenarios side-by-side so you can choose the option that legally kicks the most tax down the road. Leo: And our final topic is the absolute biggest trap of the year, the June 30th deadline. Mia: People do crazy things in the last week of June to get a tax deduction, don't they, Harvey? Harvey: They really do. Let's look at the end of financial year laptop sale trap. Someone will buy a $2,000 laptop on June 29th, walk into the accountant's office, and expect a massive refund. Because you've only owned the laptop for two days of the financial year, you only get two days' worth of depreciation. Leo: What about superannuation and charities? Harvey: Timing is everything. If you make a $10,000 super contribution on June 30th and it doesn't clear the banking system until July 2nd, you miss the deduction for this year entirely. Do your super contributions by June 15th. Mia: And what about buying things just to claim them? Harvey: Glenn called this bush math on the podcast and it is brilliant. The government is not in the business of handing out free money. If your tax rate is 30% and you spend $1,000 on tools just to get a deduction, you only get $300 back. You still spent $700 of your own money. Never buy things just for the tax break. Leo: And there you have it, an absolute masterclass of human questions answered with absolute AI perfection. Mia: Head over to Aevum Accounting at aevumaccounting.com.au to book your free 15-minute consult or lock in your tax planning session with the team today. Leo: Thank you for tuning in. Before we log off, our standard but essential reminder. Mia: The information shared today is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute specific tax or financial advice. Leo: Every financial profile is unique, and tax rules are complex. For advice specifically tailored to your investments, properties, or structures, always consult with the qualified professionals at Aevum Accounting. Mia: Until next time, stay savvy, stay proactive... Leo: ...and leave the human errors behind. See ya!