We provide simple, effective services that leave our clients with more time to do what they do best.
Ask yourself
of using our AccountantsBe able to claim additional deductions like capital works, borrowing costs, repairs and accounting fees, resulting in significantly greater tax savings.
Why choose us?
George and Joanne own properties next door to each other which they both rent out for the same amount.
Joanne doesn't use an accountant as she thinks she can do her tax returns herself and claims the costs she thinks she can claim.
George works with Lighthouse to make sure he is doing everything correctly.
How do they compare?
Expenses |
Without an Accountant |
With an Accountant |
Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
Capital works |
$0.00 |
$6,250 |
A QS report unlocked 2.5% a year of the original construction cost |
Borrowing expenses |
$0.00 |
$2,400 |
Loan establishment fees and lenders mortgage insurance, deductible over five years |
Repairs |
$1,200 |
$3,400 |
Work Joanne treated as an improvement was an immediately deductible repair |
Depreciation |
$0.00 |
$900 |
Only assets George installed new. Pre-existing ones cannot be claimed |
Accounting fees |
$0.00 |
$1,500 |
The cost of managing your tax affairs is itself deductible |
more in deductions In this scenario, George was able to deduct $13,250 more in expenses than Joanne, reducing his profit and minimising his tax outcomes.
Book a free consultation
Your property comes up once a year, at tax time
You send in what you think you can claim
A QS report is something you arrange yourself
You decide what is a repair and what is an improvement
You keep track of the lodgement deadline yourself
Property work every day, not once a year
We ask what you own, then go looking
A QS report on every property, as standard
Repairs and improvements separated properly
Our lodgement program sets the date
Negative gearing is being quarantined from the 2027-28 income year, and the capital gains discount goes on 1 July 2027. Here is what actually changed, and the one mistake that cannot be undone.
No. From the 2027-28 income year, residential property deductions that exceed your residential rental income cannot be offset against salary, wages or business income. The excess is quarantined and carried forward indefinitely, and it can be offset against future residential rental income and residential capital gains. If you last acquired the property before 7:30pm on 12 May 2026, you are grandfathered. One thing worth knowing that most summaries leave out: a quarantined amount is also denied to the cost base, so it is not simply deferred, and it is extinguished on bankruptcy.
No, and this is the detail most commentary gets wrong. The rules are drafted in the aggregate. Your whole residential portfolio is pooled, and net income from a grandfathered or new-build property can absorb the quarantined excess from another. If you hold several properties, your position is very likely better than a property-by-property reading suggests.
Ask us before you do anything. Grandfathering attaches to the owner, not the property, and it does not survive a transfer, so moving a grandfathered property into a trust or a company destroys the grandfathering permanently. Three narrow exceptions were proposed in the August 2026 exposure draft, covering a surviving spouse, the death of a non-spouse co-owner and a family-law relationship breakdown. An ordinary restructure is not among them. This is the single most expensive irreversible mistake available in this reform.
The 50% discount is abolished, not reduced, for capital gains from CGT events on or after 1 July 2027. Separately, and for individuals only, a 30% minimum tax applies to those gains. Both changes run across all CGT assets, so the asymmetry is worth noting: the negative gearing change hits residential property only, while the CGT changes reach your shares and your business assets too.
No. There is a deemed cost base reset just before 1 July 2027, but there is no tax to pay and nothing to report in that year, and the choice of method is made when you lodge in the year you sell. The ATO accepts retrospective valuations and expressly rejects prospective ones, so a valuation prepared in advance of the date it values is not acceptable to them. Keep good records instead, and talk to us before you sell.
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