You could own 18 investment properties before paying any land tax: Ed Chan

If you are currently paying land tax then you must be doing something wrong.  

You could potentially own 18 properties before paying any land tax as long as you plan things out properly.  

The old saying "one does not plan to fail, one fails to plan" is true in most things in life including the amount of land tax you pay.  

For example if you buy a property in partnership between two people then you have lost one whole land tax threshold.  

In NSW that will cost you an extra $6,000 in land tax for no reason when if the second property is in your spouse’s name then you have doubled your land tax threshold or saved $6,000 a year in land tax.  

That's a lot of money because property is a long term investment and over 10 years that's $60,000 or $120,000 over 20 years of land tax that need not have been paid if you had taken proper tax advice and planned things out before putting the wrong name on that Contract of Sale.  

Since land tax is a state tax, once you have "used up" your land tax threshold in one state, than by buying property in another state the land tax threshold starts again.

You could potentially have 18 properties around Australia before you need to pay any land tax at all.  

A word of caution.

You should get proper tax advice before investing in property because if the property is negatively geared it should be in the name of the person who is paying the higher income tax no matter what the land tax threshold is because you will lose more in income tax than land tax payable if held in the wrong name.  

If the property is positively geared then it should be in the person’s name who is currently paying the lower income tax which will help your land tax planning.  

As you can see its quite complex and in 50% of the cases you should hold it in a trust which will also save you land tax in some states.  

Please remember to take advice before you exchange contracts and not after you exchange contracts. Once you have exchanged contracts it's too late.  

The best time to take advice is when the contracts of sale is in your solicitors hands and they are doing the conveyance.  

You can contact Chan-Naylor.com.au to determine the right name to put on that contract and it could be the last thing the solicitor does before exchanging contracts.

He has co-authored three best-selling books as a seasoned property investor who understands the relationship between property investment and tax.