Hello, and welcome to today's episode of The Money Puzzle. I'm your host James Gerard, standing in for James Kirby this week for another special episode. Last week we covered the world of private equity and heard some very insightful tips from a season private equity investor, Rudy Engelbreck. If you haven't listened to that episode, i'd really encourage you to do so, it was well worth listening. It's called Private Equity Playbook, Tips from an Insider. And today we're
going to cover tax. You know, the thing is that tax probably isn't the most exciting thing in the world, but it's important. So what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to try and tackle it in a structured way. We're going to break it up into discussion by different age groups so that regardless of how old you are and who you are, hopefully you can take something away from today's episode. And we're going to finish with the top tax deductions you didn't know
that you could claim. And to help us with this very very special mission, we've got a very special guest. He's been on the show before, so his name may be familiar to a couple of you. Timothy Ricardo is the principal at Central Coast based accounting practice Accounting Advisor Group. Now, something you might not know about Tim is that he doesn't mind the occasional round of golf. So in his day job as an accountant, Tim's very good at writing
things off. But when it comes to golf, a lot of people say that Tim's golf game is a bit of a write off. So, without further delay, let's give Tim from Accounting Advisor a very big money puzzle. Welcome, Welcome, Tim.
Thanks James. I think a bit of creative accounting in golfing is always helpful though. That's the way.
We've had many rounds of golf together and we have been occasionally creative. But we'll stop talking about that because other people were on the same golf day maybe at listening to this. So before we get started, I just want everyone to know that what Tim and I discuss is general advice and it's not seen to be personal advice. So, as is always the case on the Money Puzzle, listeners should seek professional advice before acting on anything they hear
on today's episode. So let's get started, Tim, and let's have a chat about the younger age group. So what we'll do is we'll break it up into three different age groups. We'll talk about people who were between eighteen years old and forty and some of the tax issues that they face and how they can potentially optimize things and think about things I may not have thought about before. We'll then jump into people between forty and sixty years of age, and then we'll jump through to the retirees.
So starting with the age bracket of eighteen to forty, let's have a chat about the private health insurance Medicare, levy surcharge. Talk us through why is that important for people in that age bracket? Tim?
Okay, So yeah, the younger generation. I don't think we fit into that one anymore, James.
Unfortunately, we're on the other side of the Big four zero now, Tim.
So yes, what can we what wisdom can we give to these young people? Okay? So private health insurance is one of those topics that I think the young people think that they're all fit and healthy and they don't need it. So what the government does is they make it more, you know, more of an incentive for you to get it when you're younger. So basically, after the age of thirty, a loading of two percent adds to
your premiums every year. So if you're starting to you know, if you feel like if you're fit and healthy and you don't need private health insurance, the older you get you might actually require that insurance. And without giving any advice on that, from a tax perspective, you can also save a little bit of money. If you're starting to earn more income, you also pay more tax if you
don't have private health insurance. So there's an incentive there that you know, to get that insurance when you're younger, you know, thirty or below, so that you can think about the future. I suppose.
Yeah, So what's a maximum surcharge that can be charged? Assume it goes up the more you earn, the higher the search charge that you get charged.
I think it's a maximum of forty percent, but I'd have to double check that one. James, thanks for throwing a wild card question at me.
That's what I mean about what gets added to your tax, like that Medicare surch charge levee.
Okay on the levee side here, Well, so basically, the more you earn, the more tax you pay. But if you're over as an individual ninety seven thousand in income, or as a family they double it, so one hundred and ninety four thousand. Then you pay one percent surcharge on your income. So if you're earning you know, two hundred thousand dollars between the two of you, you pay
two thousand dollars extra in tax. And then if you're going up to more than you know, three hundred and two thousand, then you can actually pay one and a half percent as a loading on your tax. So yeah, not a great sort of tax to be paying. It's a penalty. So good idea to have insurance when you start earning more money.
All right, well there there we go. So the more you earn, the more you could should consider private health insurance and maybe not even so much for the core benefits of it, but getting hospital cover, because I've seen situations where people pay less premiums for hospital cover than they would in the Medicare levy surcharge. So financially it could be better just to get that private health insurance.
Plus you get to the free cover if you you need it now, even onto another one for our younger age bracket, Why do you think it might be important to get an accountant earlier in life.
Okay, So look, I think it's for these kind of points, because if you get over a certain age, you start losing some benefits, and it's more about the things you know, miss out on when you're that that young you might think the digital you know, this digital generation, everything's at your fingertips, and the ATO make it really easy to
lodge your own return. And I looked up some stats here, but at the end of August six point five million individual returns were lodged, three and a half million were by self preparers and two point only two point nine so they've sort of eclipsed the agent prepared returns. But there's these new returns called push returns, which basically the ATO prepares your return for you and says, you know, do you want to go ahead with this return? It's
for those simple taxpayers. So it is the dy trend of returns is going to be sort of increasing, I think. But essentially, if you are looking for tax advice, it is easy to get things wrong on your tax return. And a lot of the returns I see that come to me after they've prepared it themselves. I can usually
pick up quite a few things they've gotten wrong. So it's good to get an accountant to start providing some of those specialized advice pieces, especially when you start getting into some areas that are outside those very simple salary wage returns.
What about paining HEX? People often ask me, should I focus on repaying my HEX debt or should I put it onto my mortgage or onto my investment property loans? So these people who've gone through university, they're in their twenties thirties, still have a residual HEX debt. What are your thoughts there from a tax perspective.
Okay, well, on the hex stets, this is something in this age bracket, they've usually got quite large HEX debts. And every year you get a compulsory payment that comes on when you complete your tax return. So one of the things that is a mis conception, I suppose, is that I can you know, sort of make a voluntary repayment and then you know that'll save me on my
compulsory repayment. But you don't actually get any reduction on your compulsory repayment for any voluntary repayments, So it sort of it becomes that a bit of a black hole there, and the fact that it's only increasing by CPI means that you'd be able to give the advice on that as to whether CPI is better than a getting a loan outside or putting it on your mortgage. But yeah, it's something to consider.
Yeah. So in the past, it was generally advisable to not prioritize hex repayments because the indexation rate was quite low and people's mortgages, investment loans, car loans, personal loans would be of a higher interest rate. But had a bit of surprise for the last twelve months it was seven point one percent indexation, so that's been higher than
it has been for quite a long time. So every year people just need to think about and be conscious that they have a heck's debts if they do, and then just work out in the order of priority should they make an extra payment or focus their cash flow in other areas tim What about first Home supersaver scheme? What should we understand for people in that eighteen to forty year old age bracket with regards to this.
Yeah, So this was brought in back in the Turnbull government days of twenty seventeen and it was a little bit more popular than co investing. With the government on your first house for some reason. And basically this one is it allows you to pull out of SUPER any sort of contributions that you've made voluntary contributions into SUPER.
So it can be a real help for these young taxpayers that are trying to get into a house that allows them to save and put some money into SUPER, and then they can withdraw up to fifty thousand dollars of their voluntary contributions up to fifteen thousand a year of their voluntary contributions that they make, so they can get a bit of a tax deduction on the way in, and then when they pull it out, you do get a tax offset of I think it's thirty percent that
you can get when you pull that out of SUPER. And the best thing about this is that it's actually per person, So if there's two of you, you can pull out one hundred thousand out of your SUPER if you've been putting it in as voluntary contributions. So it's something that you can get a bit of a tax benefit to help you save. And then when you're pull if you're wanting to get into that first home, you can go in with someone else and obviously pull out and get a bit of a deposit together.
Perfect, so on the way in, fifteen percent tax on the way out. Some people may not realize that it's not fully tax free. That depending on your level of tax build income, there is a thirty percent tax offset there. But if you're on the highest marginal tax rate, there still might be a bit of top up tax payable
on that super money coming out and you deposit. All right, Well, I think we're done with the younger age back unless theres anything else you wanted to run through with them that comes to mind.
No, not off the top of my head. I think that's a good snapshot of a few issues to consider.
All right, good, let's move on to the middle aged tax payer, and maybe a little bit older than that as well, so between forty and sixty. So let's kick it off with negative gear in now. The thing is that negative gearing is pretty rare globally, Tim, Do you know much about negative gear in regards to how we do it versus other countries?
Look, I don't know a whole lot because we mostly focus on the Australian tax seem to be bogged down in that. But interestingly, just to look at a couple
of other countries. You know, New Zealand has sort of phased out their negative gearing for a few years now, so they're moving away from it, and then Canada they have you know, more like an offset, a future offset where you can't offset the negative gearing against your other income, but you can against future sort of rental earning, so they sort of isolate that as a deduction, which yeah, is I'm sure the government's been considering all of these different options and it's a bit of a hot topic
with them, but yeah, So more focusing on the Australian side of things, though, I think it is here. Is it here to stay? I don't know the answer to that question, but it is certainly something that is pretty common. At about one in ten were the stats that I saw of Australians that use negative gearing, which yeah, I don't know where that comes from, but that's pretty high.
All right, Well, negative gearing, maybe jumping back a step to the basics of it, Explain to our listeners why someone would want to buy an investment asset that costs them more money to maintain each year than the income they're getting from it. Why would that make financial sense or taxation sense to have a loss making investment.
Yeah, so when you're talking about negative gearing, it's basically an asset that's got a loan on it and it's creating a loss that is then tax deductible in our tax system. So from that point of view, it can look at the whole idea he James, is that you're doing it for investment obviously, and that's your area. You're picking an investment, you're hoping it's going to go up in price, but you can save a bit of tax in the meantime on the costs associated with holding on
to that property. But as far as things to consider, I think appreciation and sort of those non cash deductions are things that do help in this regard. So there are a few different types of non cash deductions that you can get when you've got a rental property, so they're not actually things that you're having to pay for, but you can claim them in your return.
Ye. And what about the decision as to who owns the property the negatively geared property, Should it be in joint names, if it's to partners who are married, should it be in the higher income the lower income? Doesn't depend on whether the property is making a loss or cash flow positive? How do people start to and again not advice, but generally how should people be thinking about.
Is there any rule of thumbs when it comes to ownership of geared leveraged investment property or geared share portfolios.
Yeah, so as far as gearing is concerned, if you need to look at it on a property by property or case by case basis. Obviously some assets grow a lot more from a capital point of view, but have a sort of are in a cash sort of negative
position on a gear to gear basis. You know, obviously in the short term having that in the name of the higher tax payer would be there would be a good idea just generally speaking, But then you need to consider that CGT at the end because if you have if you have a capital gain that's all in one person's name, you could be paying a lot more than if it's divided by the two of you at lower marginal rates, say when you retire, you're going to sell
that later on. So it's really a case by case situation there, James, But certainly something that you get advice on for each asset that you're purchasing, and just to look at the mix of what sort of a lost position that would begin, and you know what you're planning on doing with that I set, and how long you're going to hold on to it.
People between forty and sixty often ask me about family trust They say, look, should I have a family trust to buy this investment? And I usually recommend they seek professional accounting advice. I suspect that you probably get the same question. How do you approach that with regards to what are the considerations for people to walk through as they decide whether they should have a family trust or whether they should just invest in their personal names.
Yeah, so family trusts are pretty common among the higher wealth sort of individuals, ones that are trying to separate assets for asset protection purposes or just flexibility if their discretionary trusts to be able to split the income on assets between you know, more favorable you know tax rates in the future, you know, giving it to either the mum or the data or whoever the higher tax earner is. They don't have to you know, have that income coming
into their tax return when those gains come through. So we consider that also, it depends on the asset and what you're wanting to buy, because ultimately a family trust. You're getting that so that you can invest in assets and if it's property, you know, we need to consider all sorts of other taxes like state taxes and yeah, and looking at at their capital gains positions on those
assets in the future. So it's yeah, it's more for your higher wealth individuals and something that's a very specialized area that we do a lot of advice in.
Good All right, Well, there's a few other things I want to chat through for this forty to sixty year old age group, but before we do that, let's take a quick break. Hello and welcome back to the Money Puzzle. I'm James Gerard, writer, a contributor to the Wealth section of The Australian and also financial advisor with Financial Advisor dot com dot Au. And this week on the show we have Timothy Ricardo from Accounting Advisor Group. So Tim,
salary sacrifice and carry forward super contributions. This one's quite a popular thing for people in that forty to sixty age bracket, So I'll tee up what the salary sacrifice side is. The contribution caps have increased from twenty seven thousand, five hundred to thirty thousand dollars per year, So people can salary sacrifice into super, but it must take into account both employer contributions which are mandated at eleven point
five percent of income, plus any voluntary contributions. You can't just put in thirty thousand in salary sacrifice because your employer contributions will push you over the cap, which won't be great because you'll pay extra tax. So that's what can happen from a pre tax salary sacrifice perspective. But there's also these other rules around carry forward contributions where you can make more than the thirty thousand dollars in a pre tax super contribution in a given financial year.
So tim, do you want to run us through that? But also what is this two nine three tax as well? And who does that impact?
Okay, So basically just to cover the carry forward contributions, if you've got a superbalance of less than five hundred k, the government allows you to catch up on that cap that it's been unused for the last five years, so it's now thirty It used to be twenty seven and a half, as you mentioned, So if you'd only contributed say seventeen and a half last financial year, you've got ten thousand dollars there that you haven't made use of,
you're allowed to utilize that in the current financial gear. And this has become quite a good strategy for people that say, have a higher income gear and they want to try to smooth out their income in that financial gear. They can utilize the super threshold in the current year, so it's up to thirty thousand this year, and then they can cash in on I suppose you'd say that the lost threshold of deductions in the previous year that
haven't been used. So we use sort of this for capital gains, tax management and for other sort of income smoothing to help people invest and prepare for the future and manage their tax in that regard.
All right, So what you're saying is that if someone sells an investment property, for example, and there's a big capital gain attached to it, it might push them up into the forty seven percent tax bracket. But if they've got this unused super contribution that they can carry forward from the last five years, let's just say they've got fifty thousand dollars in extra super contributions, they can make
that super contribution pay. In most cases, fifteen percent tax on that super contribution, but save forty seven percent tax which would be from the capital gains tax. Is that more or less what we're saying with this CGT management with the carry forward contributions.
That's right, Yeah, so it's quite significant. However, the as you mentioned before, there is something called they give two nine three tax the government has introduced for the people that earn over two hundred and fifty thousand including super contributions. They do your contributions into super go up from fifteen to thirty percent. So there's still a benefit there, but it's just not quite as good as the fifteen percent
tax in super. So so whilst there's benefits for the higher income earner, the government has sort of reduced the benefit there when you're earning over two hundred and fifty thousand including super contributions.
The last thing I want to chat about with this middle age bracket is motor vehicle deductions. There's also a common area that I discuss with people that they ask, how do I fund my next motor vehicle? Should I use cash redraw from my mortgage borrow against my mortgage ovated least car loan personal loan? What are your thoughts there, team from a tax perspective.
Yeah, so, look, I think that the family car upgrade happens between forty and sixty, or maybe the midlife crisis car. James, I think you've had a few of those. Speak for yourself, Mitsubishima EVO, that's the aid en to forty year old car.
You were under forty and to be fair, I did have an equivalent sort of super rue bright orange car in that age bracket too, so I can't talk.
Yeah, So essentially salary sacrificing. Look, really, when it comes to that, there's the traditional you know, looking at how you claim that car with using a log book, and what use is it for work, and how much tax you're going to be paying if you're salary sacrificing versus buying it privately. And there is a little bit of a benefit sometimes if you can if it is just a private car and you can salary sacrifice it, especially
when you're on those higher tax brackets. However, the main benefit that's come out in the last couple of years has been the ev car exemption for FBT, So that's one that if you're looking at upgrading a car and utilizing salary sacrifice the like a novate, a lease, an EV's tax effective way to go.
Nice one. All right, well let's move on to the retirees. So we're talking in sixty plus. Now, first thing we'll have a chat about is super putting money into super tax free thresholds. Do you want to run it through that, Tim?
Yeah, So essentially when we're looking at how much money you've got into Super, so you're talking about total superbalance, James there.
Yeah, we should probably Well I'll tee it up so you can have up to one point nine million dollars in push it to the pension phase and conditions of releases sixty and retired or sixty five and still working. So if you stop working at sixty, for example, you can move up to one point nine million dollars if your super into a tax free pension. And when I say tax free, I mean that the income the gains
inside of the account of tax free. The drawing from the super fund to your personal bank account is non accessible tax free income as well. It's the most tax effective structure for people in retirement. But is there any little tips and tricks and things relating to a super that people should be aware of or think about in this sixty plus age bracket. So what about people who are sixty five, for example, that they're still working that
triggers a condition of a release. So what's the you'll play there for those people.
Yeah, that's right. So over sixty five, you can still be working and you've got full access to your super and there's a lot of strategies that can come out of that which allow you to redraw money from your super tax free, and then you can potentially recontribute to max out the contributions the contribution caps from year to year, so you can try to you sort of get the best of both worlds. You get to pull it out
tax free. Earnings in the superfund are tax free as well, and then you can recontribute and only pay fifteen percent on what you are recontributing. Obviously, the government doesn't want this to be abused, and so they put in a bit of a cap here of one point nine million dollars.
Well at the time it was lower than that. It's now at one point nine from first July, so so one point nine mill is if you've got money over that, it doesn't go into you can't put it into tax free into an account based pension, but you still have access to that over sixty five, so you can still
access that money. But there's a lot of strategies there that we can look at, and you know, your financial advisor can look at and like, for example, if you're still working between the ages of sixty seven and seventy five, there is still the ability to claim on personal contributions if you're meeting that work test and things like that.
And what about people throughout their working lives they accumulating assets, the buying investment property that have personal share portfolios. As I've mentioned, superinnuation is the most tax effective environment in retirement, so we probably want to try and transition some of this wealth out of personal names into super. Is there an ideal time to do that? Is it before people stop working after they retire? What are your thoughts they're thinking about.
Tax Well, I think the biggest thing that that people have with SUPER is you know when can I access it? So over sixty you can access your SUPER. If you stop working. Once you get to sixty five, you know there's no holes, but you can get access to that.
So essentially there's no restriction to if there's no restriction on access and it's the most tax effective place to have your money, then you should be utilizing those, you know, sort of contribution thresholds to get to get money into super, and currently they're sitting at one hundred and twenty thousand
dollars per year. Probably something that we could mention there, James, is the you know bring forward contribution where you can put in up to three times you know, the non concessional contribution threshold, so you can put in you know, what is it, three hundred and sixty thousand in one year, which I'm sure you do a lot for your clients with their estate planning and all that sort of thing.
We do, and sometimes if we're near the end of a financial year, we might put in one hundred and nineteen thousand dollars in June and not trigger that bring forward rule, and then in July we've still got the full three hundred and sixty thousand dollars to put it in, so we've snuck in a little bit more in there. And then also we have a chat about when to
sell the assets. So if somebody's working, say they're only eighty thousand dollars a year, if it doesn't make a difference with regards to the sell price of the shares or the property, all things being equal, all other things being equal, it can make better sense to sell it when they're retired because they don't have their employment income anymore.
So their base marginal tax rate starts from zero and the only thing that we'll build on that will be the accessible gains that they have on the assets of their disposing.
So is that a fair coll Yeah. Absolutely. Managing when you sell your assets outside of SUPER is a massive part of tax planning. If you've got that investment property that you've been negative gearing for many years, you need to plan to use that use those lower thresholds once you've stopped working to minimize that CGT when you do eventually sell that asset to fund your retirement. So yeah, absolutely.
We don't have def taxes in Australia, but non financial dependents who receive our SUPER part of it that they have to pay seventeen percent on the SUPER payout for that taxable component. Is there any strategy there to reduce the potential tax payable from SUPER to our non financial dependence.
Yeah, So that's that estate planning we were talking about a minute ago. The ability to pull out money after your sixty five and not working, or sixty sixty when you're not working, or sixty five whether you're working or not sorry, does allow you to look at that balance you've got in Super. And there's two sides to that balance is a two major ones as the taxable component, which is made up of contributions that have been made by your employer or earnings in the fund, and those
that side of your superbalance. If you pass away and that goes to a non dependent which might be a grown up child, you know, one of your one of your children, then they pay that extra seventeen percent tax.
So in thinking about that balance early, in getting your financial planner involved in looking at your SUPER balance, you know, before you lose the ability to recontribute means that you can, I suppose come up with a strategy that will allow you to pull money out of the Super, recontribute it as what they call tax free contributions, and manage that potential tax in the future for your children.
Sounds good, well, Otherwise, if you know you're going to die, just pull all your money out of Super tax free and distribute it that way. That's right A bit morbid that that's the reality of it. Now, the final thing for our retirees I want to have a chat about or ask you, is do they still need a self managed superfund in retirement or should they close it down and move to a simpler quote unquote arrangement.
So self managed super is one of those things that it's one of those vehicles that you can use throughout your retirement. And I think that it really depends on whether you're utilizing the capabilities of the self managed superfund. And what I mean by that is, I guess whether you've got a proactive advisor, you know that likes to look at various investments that maybe are outside the normal you know, retail super offerings like shares or cash investments.
But also you know, we do a lot of small business tax and small business owners often they've got a specific exemption there that allows them to purchase business real property in their super funds, which can be a large benefit to them. And so it's just whether or not you're using those capabilities in the self managed super but also it can become quite cost effective the more and more appropriate the more you have in super for that
retirement management. But what are your thoughts on it, James, Yes, it's really corse.
It's for courses if you're using the flexibility given to you for a self managed super fund in retirement. So if you're buying a kilo of gold, if you're holding spoke bond investments that you can't get inside of a retail or industry super fund, then yes, absolutely, property assets physical property assets have an SMSF. But if you have an SMSF and you're just invested in managed funds and ETFs, it doesn't really need an SMSF. You could do that
in most industry funds and retail funds these days. So it really just comes down to are you using the benefits of the self managed super fund and that probably applies across all age spectrum as well, not just for people in retirement. Now, Tim, I'm excited. The next thing we're gonna have a chat about is tax deductions you didn't realize you could claim. But before we do that, let's just take a short break. Hello and welcome back
to the Money Puzzle. I'm James Gerard, writer contributor to the Wealth section of The Australian and also financial advisor with Financial advisor dot com, Dot au and on this week's show, I have Timothy Ricardo from Accounting Advisor. Now, before we get into this last section, I just want to remind everybody that this is general advice, not personal advice, so please seek out a qualified advisor before making any decision. Timothy, Top five. Maybe we'll make it six tax deductions. You
didn't realize that you could claim, so number one. Tell me about income protection.
Okay, So income protection is one of those things where we put it in at label D fifteen on your tax return. So it's something that you know. It's looking after your you know in those situations when you unexpected things crop up and you might hurt yourself or you might not be able to work for some reason. And income protection because the the earnings from that policy are assessable income when they come in, the deduction is available for the premiums you pay. Now, this is something that
probably applies. It's a good thing to think about in that eighty to thirty year old range because if you have had a financial advisor like me back in that age, which James Gerard, my friendly neighborhood financial advisor, got me into a policy back then, you know I am able to just claim that every year. And yeah, you gave me some good advice back then, James.
Thank you, Timothy. And I didn't even invoice you for it. Oh wow, your friendship to me. Is that the payment for that advice I gave you? Now? The next one is handbags and luggage for work purposes. So can I go off and buy a two thousand dollars luxury bag that I will carry my laptop in, am I working papers for work purposes?
Okay? So you can claim a work bag a bag that you're using for work purposes, And that's the key thing. The main thing here is removing any private use. You can't just take your flashy three thousand dollars bag out and utilize it on the weekend. If you're claiming it for work, You've got to allow for the private use. So allow for your private use. And if it's over a certain level, then it might need to be depreciated
at certain cost. So they're the two main considerations. But yes, it is deductible, all right.
What about claiming meals? What are the parameters there around How can we claim a meal as a tax deduction?
Okay, so under a lot of awards and employee benefits. You often get a meal allowance. Now that meal allowance is deductible to the extent of what you're paying out for the meal. The ATO publishes a raid every year, which this is about thirty five thirty five sixty five. So if you have meals up to that price, you don't actually need to keep the receipts for those meals, but you are able to claim for your meals when you have overtime meal allowances.
What about claiming interest on things? So what are the things that I can claim interest on? So, for example, if I have a tax debt, can I borrow money to pay the tax office and claim an interest on that loan that I use to pay my tax bill.
Yes, and there's lots of strategies that people like to come up with on this one. But yeah, interest on any income earning asset is tax deductible. So if you draw down on your mortgage to buy a share portfolio, for example, you can claim the interest on that against the dividend income. But yeah, like you said, on tax expenses and tax management costs associated, the interest is deductible on that. So that's something that a lot of people might not have known.
All right, well, traveling to workplaces. I know that usually from home to your normal place of work, if you drive, catch a bars L train, you can't usually claim that as a tax deduction. But is there some scope or avenue to be able to claim travel to a workplace?
Yeah? Okay, so the common one that everyone knows about is driving between workplaces. Or if you go to work and then you have to go out to a client's place, you can claim that trip. But what they might not know is that to an alternative workplace, even from your home, you can claim a deduction to go there. So it has to be somewhere that's not your regular workplace, or
there's no regular pattern of attending that alternative location. But if you're going to somewhere you know that isn't your normal location, then yes, you can claim that between your home and the workplace.
All right, And final one, let's just say you're an accountant, and we won't name names, but let's just call them Tim, this random accountant, and say Tim's terrible at golf, and golf's an important part of his work because he meets clients on the golf course, new clients, existing clients. But he's just absolutely terrible at golf. Can we claim the cost of golf lessons as a tax deduction?
Okay? Why would I be claiming these?
Not you? It was just an anonymous accountant called Timothy.
Okay, okay, So golf lessons, it's got to be attached to. It falls into possibly like self education, James, or sort of that kind of a category. I love your curveball questions, and I will add here no preparation was given for this one. Yeah, so if you have, you'd have to have an income association to be claiming that you know
that lesson, James. So no, Unfortunately, I won't be claiming any lessons anytime soon, so and neither will you, unfortunately, because I think last time we played, we're still waiting on that one hundred dollar bet. But you've never I don't think you've ever beaten me whenever that BET's come up.
On that inside joke, tim and I have this run in bet for about ten years that we're going to play each other in golf and whoever wins will have one hundred dollars as the prize and we play together. But we've never called in that particular bet. So maybe the next.
Time, well, I've added there that it's only not been called in because you lose every time. James, Well, that's true.
Yeah, so I did say, all right, let's do it this round, but then I go, oh, it's a bit windy today, let's defer it to the next time. But getting back to business. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tim, I've covered a lot. I'm sure our listeners now have some good ideas I can go explore regarding taxes, regardless of how old they are.
Thanks for having me, James.
And to our listens, thanking you for turn tuning into today's episode of The Money Puzzle. Send us a question. James Kirby will answer it when he's back in two weeks now. Coming up on our next episode, you'll get me again, and we're going to interview a lawyer, which
I'm very excited to do. We've got lots of interesting questions to go through because there's a very big intersection between finances and legal so we're going to explore some of the most interesting areas, such as not losing your property deposit to scammers, what happens there, how does that happen, handling finances for blended families, and lots of other issues to cover, but for now you can tweetis your thoughts.
Just use the hashtag the Money Puzzle or one word or email us on the Money Puzzle at the Australian dot Com Today you Until next time, I'm James Gerard. Talk to you soon.