BC, costs incurred while construction is happening, is potentially deductible. This was decided with the case of Steele about 10 years ago. Mrs Steele took about 10 years to develiop a property – in fact she never did develop the property (from memory) but she was still able to claim interest etc because she intended to rent the property out when she eventually developed.

That is the trouble with international investments. This is a very complex area and you must expect to pay for this extra complexity. You need someone with a masters in tax, as the average tax person wouldn't know much.

I think you should keep your business trading accounts with a different bank. What could happen if you have a hard time and your accounts look bad – your bank could start to get worried. If you were going to try to get over this bad period by borrowing more money from the same bank then they would be even more worried.

You entered into a contract and you now want to break that contract. I would suggest you read your contract in full and see if there was any cooling off provisions and then determine if you notified them in time.

Also consider contacting the department of fair trading in your state.

Cancelling the credit card won't save you as the bank can still let the charges go through and chase you for the money.

You should take this very seriously as they could easily take you to court and win and then you would have a judgement on your credit file for the next 5 years. They can still chase you for the money and possibly seize assets.

Its good in theory but you have to plan for every possible eventuallity.

What will happen with finance? All directors and unit holders need to guarantee the loan. If 5 people guarantee the loan then this is going to be 5 times as risky as an individal buying and hurt future borrowing capacity of everybody. This can be structured around so only one person need to guarantee – but then you have to ask who and should this person be compensated for the risk they are taking.

Think, death divorce and bankruptcy of each person too.

Thats right accountants cannot give asset protection advice as this is legal advice and they are not trained in this area. But many do, so take their advice with a grain of salt, but it is important to get the tax advice as well.

What are the relevant terms of that agreement? We have no way of knowing what you agreed to, you must read your contract.

RPI – how do you become a surveyor?

One strategy may be to add dad to title now. Then build and subdivide splitting the blocks on completion. Stamp duty on the way in, but only half of the value at that time. On sub-division it is possible that not stamp will be payable but this must be set up properly up front using a deed of partition.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the recommendation, but I can't take on anymore legal clients for a few weeks. I've sent you an email Nigel.