I am a mother of 3 young children, and am a stay at home mum.
My partner and I have our PPOR plus 2 IP. IP no.1 is 100% in my name and IP no.2 is split 50%. Both properties are currently negatively geared.
We have been receiving family assistance payments to help with the cost of living.
The problem is, I earned a small amount of salary due to accured annual leave entitlements when I resigned from my job I had been on maternity leave from.
My Income was : $4,000
My Rental Losses were : – $16,000
So my Taxable Income was : -$12,000The family assistance office or centrelink have assesed my income as $16,000 as they add any rental losses back to the taxable income, which they have taken as $0.
Now they are requesting half my payments to be repaid.
What can I do and how can this be corrected?
Any help very much appreciated.
Hi there,
I had a simliar problem a few years back with properties that were held in joint names with my wife. Our salaries were below the FTB thresholds. However, when the negative gearing was added on to our incomes then it put us over the limit and we had to pay back thousands. I argued that it was not fair and that we were just trying to get ahead and that the investments were long term and the government should be encouraging us to invest for our future and not penalise us for doing so. The reply from Centrelink was that the losses that we were reporting could be carried forward to future tax years when my wife returned to work and even though we were not recieving the income that year, we would benfit in future years when her tax was reduced. Therefore, we had to repay all of the overpayments.
Therefore, with your situation you probably need to asses if you will be returning to work anytime soon. If so, then you need to work out the benefit of reporting the losses to the ATO ( so you can carry forward the losses ) versus you payment from Centrelink, especially with the IP that is just in your name.
I suggest you talk with your accountant about your individual circumstances.
Regards,
Brett
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