Simple.

By answering lots of questions your clients would otherwise ask you, and helping them get better organised before they see you.

We’ve been doing this for a long time, over 20 years, so we know how best to prepare your clients before they see you.

First step is to make sure your clients have a Depreciation Schedule from a reputable and competent provider. You’ll be shooting yourself in the foot if you just tell a client to ‘go and get a Depreciation Schedule.’

Many will shop around for the cheapest one they can find, and goodness knows what it will be like. Others might choose someone with a looong lead time. That’s going to cause you problems if you have a tax return mostly completed and have to wait months for the final piece of the puzzle.

Are there clients you think might have bought a property in the last year or so? Send them to us using your booking link and we’ll work out if there is any depreciation to claim in that property. Residential, farms, commercial, we do them all.

We assess the viability of properties all the time. Often there is sufficient information online for us to work out if it’s worth doing a Depreciation Schedule and in many cases to estimate the return. It’s what we have always done.

And when we do the job, we’ll do it quickly. We can often inspect within a week and turn the Depreciation Schedule around in a week after that. For jobs we don’t have to inspect, we can turn them around in a matter of days to help you out.

What about clients who already have a Depreciation Schedule? We help them, too, with our free update service that allows clients to add new improvements to their Depreciation Schedules. 

And those tricky questions about repairs vs improvements? Yeah, we deal with those.

Key points:

• How to tell if it’s worth getting a Depreciation Schedule? Send your clients to us using your booking link for a free estimate and we’ll talk them through the process. 
• Our free update service allows clients to update their Schedules with improvements for the life of their Schedule. We’ll send the updated Schedule to you and your client.
• Repairs vs improvements is something we talk to clients about often. Before they get to you, we help them to understand the difference between Depreciating Assets and Capital Works so they can often make their own determination on their expenditure.

How to tell if it’s worth getting a Depreciation Schedule

The best advice here is to not try and work out yourself if it’s worth doing. Send your clients to us using your booking link and we’ll estimate the depreciation and talk them through the process.

There have been a few changes to depreciation over the years and some accountants have defaulted to the position that if a property is not brand new, it’s not worth doing. This stance short changes clients.

If a residential property was built after 1987, there is depreciation sitting in it waiting to be claimed. Seems a pity for it to not get picked up. We have written previously here about the depreciation sitting in older properties.

What about properties much older than than 1987? Lots of those properties have been renovated – hard to attract tenants otherwise. And there is depreciation in those renos, even if your client didn’t do them. Sometimes it’s just a kitchen and a bathroom, but sometimes much more. 

We did a job recently on an old Queenslander. From the outside, it looked original, albeit freshly painted. But inside, it was completely renovated, and to a high standard. Then we noticed that it has been raised, which is not uncommon with Queenslanders. 

The Capital Works deduction available on that 90 year old property was over $9,000 per year. And that client came to us thinking there was nothing to claim.

Our free update service

A lot of accountants don’t realise we do this. 

You know what’s like in tax season when clients come to you with receipts for work they have done to their rental properties. The first thing you need to do is work out if they are repairs or improvements – more about that blurry line below.

Then having worked out what can be expensed vs what needs to be depreciated, you then need to manage the improvements alongside the Depreciation Schedule. Wouldn’t it be good if they were all incorporated into a revised Depreciation Schedule?

That’s what we do. We add the works deemed to be improvements to the existing Depreciation Schedule and we send a revised Schedule to you and the client. You can read more on this here. 

Often clients come to us first with their list of expenditure and we suggest what things their accountant might be able to expense and we take up the remainder.

Repairs vs Improvements – the blurry line

This is one we write about often, most recently here. Why often? Because accountants and clients keep asking us about it. 

We’re happy to talk clients through the distinction, but here is how we do it in case you want to have a go:

1. The first thing to do is get clients to understand the difference between Depreciating Assets, Div 40, and Capital Works, Div 43.
2. Then we look at them individually and ask questions.
3. ‘Have you replaced any Assets in their entirety, like a cooktop, a water heater, ceiling fan etc? If you replace an Asset it’s not a repair and you need to depreciate that Asset. It doesn’t matter if the cooktop was beyond repair or if the water heater split down the side and filled up the garage with tepid water. If you replace it, you depreciate it.’
4. ‘Let’s talk about painting, plumbing work, shower screens, door and window fixes etc. To expense that stuff as repairs, it needs to be work that you did because of deterioration or damage that occurred while YOU were renting out the property.’
5. ‘If it was work you did BEFORE you started to rent out the property, or soon after, it is an improvement and you need to depreciate that work.’

Once we get clients to understand the above, they are often able to make their own determination on nearly all of their expenditure.

News

You would have heard that the latest adjustment to the Instant Asset Write-Off finally got through the Lower House. Goodness knows why some politicians picked something so obscure to grandstand about.

It has been set at $20K for businesses with a turnover of less than $10m. Remember, that’s $20K per item and it applies to anything that is considered Plant and Equipment: air conditioning, floor coverings, computers, vehicles etc.

Also note that items costing over $20K that go into the Pool can be written off when their written down value falls below $20K.

But they have only made the determination for the 2024 tax year, so we can expect more grandstanding about the threshold for the current tax year – and more uncertainty for businesses.

Enquire now for a property-specific assessment

Has this article reminded you about a client’s investment property? Residential properties, commercial properties, even farms, we do them all.

If you want us to talk to a client about a Depreciation Schedule, make a no-obligation enquiry and rely on our 20-plus years of experience in estimating depreciation returns.