Do you southerners ever get Noel Whittaker’s column in your newspapers? {Noel has be writing columns about investment & other financial matters for 20+ years in Qld}
Interestingly Noel wrote in last Sunday’s column about a few of the things we have been discussing recently, namely refinancing IPs to fund private purchases, contaminating (my word, not his) your investment loan with private purchases, and offset accounts.
Are you lurking here Noel[
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Interestingly he wrote that one of his clients received incorrect advice from the ATO phone help about offset accounts, saying that the interest that you saved by having cash in an offset account can no longer be deductible, even after you take the cash back out of the offset account.
This is totally wrong of course, as in a tax ruling that Noel quoted.
His implication is that the ony advice you can really rely on is an official private ruling.Sadly I find his stuff largely sensationalistic, not informative or as you point out, accurate!
He did a property investing article about 4 weeks ago that had me hopping mad, he had almost no facts to offer, just used every emotional tug he could to insinuate that property had no merit at all (story along the lines of: couple buys investment property stretching budget to limit, wife falls pregnant and has difficulties, couple defaults and their financial plans are “in tatters”, end of story) – basically he expouses the “come and see me and I will look after you via managed funds, everything else is too dangerous and should be avoided” routine just a little too much.
He has the ability to be so inspiring, and a lot of people follow his advice, just wish it was more educational and less sensational. [
]Mel
Just to clarify, Mel, Noel was writing about the inaccuracy of the telephone advice, ie I wasn’t implying that Noel’s advice was inaccurate.
The last thing I would do is rely upon the advice of a telephone clerk at the ATO anyway.
Oops – thanks Doogs. Re not trusting ATO – surely if you’ve taken and acted on their advice you should have some level of confidence, or am I just being naive?
Mel
As Noel wrote: they just have so many staff in the phone help area, they can’t all be full bottle. I guess you’ll just have to get confirmation in this forum!
I’ve received bad/ wrong/ potentially very costly from my EX accountant so we’re not safe anwhere!
It was about the old capital gains tax method, so I did the research myself, and I then started educating accountants about it, including Noel Whittaker!
Anyway, I’m trying to wean myself off this forum, I’ve got to get back to work!
Regards, Jim.Ring the ATO 3 times to ask the same question. If you get the same answer from three different people then there is a chance that they may be correct… that’s about all you can do.
Cheers
Stu
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