Category: Investment

  • How a minor is taxed – trust assessment codes

    Here is a quick post on some information on working out the assessment codes, which isn’t as obvious. Work from left to right. Age First Second Trust Assessment Code child prescribed person (102AC) – the person is less than 18 years of age on the last day of the year of income and the person…

  • What is a Strata Owners Incorporation Number?

    I recently came into a situation where I needed to open a bank account for Strata Owners, I managed to open an account with a Big 4 Bank, but then they were asking me for the Incorporation Number of the Body Corporate. On registration of a Strata Titles Scheme, a Body Corporate becomes incorporated, but…

  • Is Principle and Interest (P&I) or Interest Only (IO) better on my investment loan?

    Mortgages and interest rates, they are extremely confusing. Here is a recent problem I had, should I go Principle and Interest (P&I) or  Interest Only (IO) on an investment loan. Initially, these seams an obvious choice, go the IO and deposit the saved principle payments into your owner occupied offset, as you are unable to…

  • How to calculate comparison interest rate in Excel

    Searching for how comparison interest rates are calculated, I found an article on Tomorrow Finance, but unfortunately a lot of the numbers provided no insight into how they were calculated. I hope to break it down further and explain how to calculate comparison interest rates with Excel. The Excel formula can be quite tricky and…

  • Calculate last business day in month with Excel

    Here is a quick post to calculate the last business day in a month taking into account holidays. This is useful for with finance calculations and wanting to know a bank’s last banking day in a month. =WORKDAY(EOMONTH(A2,0)+1,-1,holidays!A:A) Where; Cell A2 is the reference month cell Range holidays!A:A is a list of holidays

  • Home loans – Fixed vs. Variable interest rates

    I saw an interesting chart on Canstar which plotted the history of RBA Cash Rate, variable and 3-year fixed interest rates. This data is all available on the Reserve Bank of Australia website, look for A2 and F2 statistics. I thought I would take it a step further and determine from past history if the…

  • To trust or not to trust – the benefits of a discretionary (family) trust – final comparison

    I have discussed the benefits of a discretionary trust aka family trust for minimising capital gains tax (CGT). I have also discussed the benefits of a discretionary trust from minimising taxable income. For this last part I am going to compare a discretionary trust against a direct 50-50 split over an average person’s lifespan. Again…

  • To trust or not to trust – the benefits of a discretionary (family) trust for minimising income tax

    A few weeks ago I blogged about the insignificant benefits of a discretionary (or family) trust compared with a basic 50-50 joint split when it came to Capital Gains Tax (CGT), this week I will compare the two when it comes to rental income. Rental income is different to CGT in that rental income is…

  • To trust or not to trust – the benefits of a discretionary (family) trust for minimising CGT

    Discretionary or family trust is a trust where the income generated in the trust can be distributed to the beneficiaries at the discretion of the trustee, or simply the income can be divided up however one pleases. It is commonly known that a discretionary trust can be used as a form of tax minimisation, but…

  • Triplex Development – Contour Survey

    One of the first things you should arrange prior to designing the buildings on the block is a contour survey of the land, a contour survey provides information on the elevation of the land and also situations of sewerage, water and power connections as well as positions of existing fences and trees. Generally, a builder…