This snippet is from an Empower Wealth episode: How to Boost Your Tax Return in 2025: Ben & Julia’s Hot Tips. 

In this week’s bonus episode, Ben shares key highlights from his recent Talking Property Tax conversation with property tax expert Julia Hartman—covering what smart investors need to know before 30 June. 

From HECS/HELP debt changes to interest prepayments, land tax rules, and advance rental payments on commercial property, this episode is your end-of-financial-year tax health check. 

Here’s what you’ll learn in this short but sharp episode: 

💥 Why you should avoid paying off your HECS/HELP debt before 1 June 2025
🏡 How to decide if paying interest in advance is right for you
🧾 What deductions you can and can’t claim in advance for investment properties
⚠️ What to watch out for if your commercial tenant wants to prepay rent
📉 How to avoid getting locked into a deduction strategy that no longer suits you 

If you want to get ahead of tax season and potentially boost your return, this one’s a must-listen. 

Want to Maximise Your Return This Tax Time?

At our sister company Empower Wealth, the Tax & Property Accounting team specialises in helping property investors claim every dollar they’re legally entitled to—no guesswork, no gimmicks. 

We even back it up with our Maximum Refund Guarantee! 

If you want to get the maximum refunds you are entitled to, now is the time to get your tax strategy sorted. 

Book your free initial consultation today and chat with one of our experienced accountants via the link here: thepropertycouch.com.au/tax  

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If You Enjoyed TPC Gold | How to Maximise Your Tax Returns in 2025, You Might Also Like:

• Ep 434 | “It Is A Minefield”: Unboxing Tax Structures and Myths 
• Ep 518 | The Costly Mistakes Property Owners Make in Their Tax Returns (and How to Avoid Them!) – Chat with ATO Assistant Commissioner Rob Thomson 
• Ep 542 | The Overlooked CGT Timebomb Hidden in Joint Tenancy – Chat with Julia Hartman 

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Transcript

Ben Kingsley
G’day folks, Ben Kingsley here. Now last week I did an episode on Talking Property Tax with Julia Hartman. It was Episode Six of that series, and today we’re sharing a summary version of those conversations I had and it’s all to do with your tax planning in the lead up to the end of the financial year. So this is a summary version of the episode I did recently with Julia Hartman on Talking Property Tax.  

Today we’re going to be talking about some very interesting and timely topics. I’m going to cover off on HECS and HELP debt. So there’s some changes now that the Labor Party have got in. We’re also going to have a reminder around tax and property planning for those property investors, which is obviously our mainstay of audience. And then we’re going to go a little deeper in terms of some of the superannuation and planning around that, and also cover off on some of the fundamentals. So it’s going to be a great show. I’m looking forward to getting into it. So Julia, let’s get started. I want to talk about the HECS or HELP debt as it’s sometimes referred to, and what are some of the important things that we need to be aware of now that Labor has got back into power.  

Julia Hartman
Well, I suppose the most urgent and important thing is to warn you not to pay off your HECS debt between now and the 1st of June. So there’s not many people who are going to benefit from that. But whatever you owe at the 1st of June, the government’s going to give you a 20% discount on it. So you want to owe as much as possible at that point. But the uplift factor will kick into that amount too, but that should only be about 3%. So what your employer takes out of your pay packet is not going off your HECS debt until you do your tax return, so don’t worry about what’s coming out of your pay. It’s just those voluntary payments that you don’t want to do in the next three weeks.  

Ben Kingsley
So it’s a pretty straightforward piece of advice and that is because it’s a 20% value of your existing HECS debt. Well, don’t pay it before the 1st of June because that’s the calculation date. So if we leave it till after that, then you’ll basically get the higher deduction off your HECS debt. So great piece of advice there, Julia. And that one was an easy one. There wasn’t really much else in regard to general far reaching or macro changes that the Labor Party have made to the tax system this year, so what I wanted to do was focus in on tax planning for property investors, because this is the time of year.  

Now it is early May, and so we need a little bit of time to basically potentially do some of these things, and in terms of getting ourselves in order for the next tax round. So the first one, and one of the most common ones we get asked about, is obviously the ability to pay potentially 12 months’ expenses in advance. And that’s the rule. That’s all allowable when it comes to residential investment properties. And the biggest one, obviously one of the biggest costs for a lot of people is the interest cost. And so talk to us about the interest in advance, interest costs that might be claimable, and what are some of the pros and cons associated with that, Julia?  

Julia Hartman 
Right, well first of all when you enter into this arrangement it’s not just enough to work out what the interest is and pay it off the loan. You’ve got to make arrangement with your bank that they actually do charge you the interest and that’s what you pay to get interest in advance. And then you’ve got to think about: Is this the year to do it? And the tax brackets aren’t that different over the next few years so you can look at your income and also whether you might be taking time off work. So if you pay two years’ worth of interest in this year, then next year the only way you’re going to get any interest deduction is to pay a year in advance again. So you see you’ve lost that advantage; you’ve just got one years’ interest next year and you’re locked in to paying it in advance each time in order to get any deduction at all. So you want to save it for that big capital gain or something like that. Or on the other side of the coin, save it for a time when you might take a year off work – for family or whatever reasons. So you make the extra payment the year before you take the time off work, and then when you don’t need the deduction so much in the following year you can catch up, and then the year after that it’s all business as usual.  

Ben Kingsley
Yeah, so there’s a couple of really important points that you make there. In the event that if your income is going to be regular over a long period of time, once you’re sort of in this interest in advance, you then have to keep rolling it over and over. And so a lot of people think: Well, why am I doing this? I mean, there’s potentially a cost for your tax agent to do that. Also, if you’re working with a broker, this needs to be put in place with a lender. That’s why we’re talking about it in May, because it does take a bit of time and you ultimately need to pay that money into the bank so there’s a record and documentation which is what Julia was saying. So the best time when these things are advantageous is in the event that you have a high income year that you want to offset the tax. And then to Julia’s point, if you’re having maternity leave or paternity leave and your income is going to drop considerably in the next year or two, that’s the run-up and planning that we’re talking about. So may not be applicable for you this year. Or the other thing, if you’re maybe coming closer to retirement and the same principles apply in terms of if your income is going to drop substantially, then the interest in advance on lending is something to consider as part of your tax planning. The other ones which are probably a little bit less known for some people, Julie, is things like rates, insurances, body corporates. Do you see a lot of that throughout the BANTACS practices in terms of people trying to pay those in advance?  

Julia Hartman
No, not really. I’ve included this more as a warning to people that you can only pay 12 months in advance. So if your body corporate fees are already in advance, you can’t go and pay another 12 months’ worth and claim a deduction for it.   

Ben Kingsley
So a lot of people don’t realise that, but body corporate fees don’t run necessarily on a financial year. So the example there is if you’ve paid body corporate fees up until the 31st of December already in advance, then technically you’ve only got six months of additional fees in advance. And I think some of the other challenges there is again, you’ve got to actually pay it before 30 June, and you’ve got to have documented evidence of that. And I’m just trying to think, from a rates notice or from a council point of view…how would they account for that and what sort of record or information would they provide to you?  

Julia Hartman
Well, you can get a statement off most councils that should show the payment being made.  

Ben Kingsley
But it’s certainly not something that I hear often about because it’s not a huge amount of money, whereas the interest in advance on a loan potentially has some advantages associated with that. So that’s interesting.  

Julia Hartman
Yeah, it’s just a warning.  

Ben Kingsley
Okay. Let’s move down now to land tax. And obviously land tax is treated differently. So let’s talk to what are those differences, Julia?  

Julia Hartman
Well we’ve been talking about paying in advance and all those sorts of things to draw the claim forward. But the land tax is only deductible in the year it applies to, so paying it the following year doesn’t mean it goes in that year’s tax return… and certainly you can’t do any payments in advance. It’s: Right, you’ve been assessed for that year; that’s the year the tax return goes.  

Ben Kingsley
Yeah, so your accountant will do that calculation and make sure that they’re claiming the right portion in the right year as part of that story. So that’s an interesting one. The other one that’s interesting is in terms of interest in advance, and we’re going a little bit into commercial tenancies here. There might be a few people who have some commercial tenancies. There’s, you know, in terms of the discussions and reading the blogs that you put together, in some instances the tenants potentially might want to pay in advance, but that has unintended consequences for the actual owner of the property, doesn’t it?  

Julia Hartman
Yes, well it’s generally people that can get a tax deduction for their rents, so commercial properties is a rule of thumb. If they pay you that money 12 months before the 30th of June, you’re going to have to declare it unless you can argue somehow you might have to pay it back. It’s the Arthur Murray principal… where it’s dance school and they said oh yeah, but if they don’t take all the classes, we’d have to pay it back. So then they didn’t have to declare it, but I think that would be pretty hard when you’ve got a lease in place to stay. So yeah, you’re stuck with 12 months’ extra rent in your tax return if they pay it. Run.  

Ben Kingsley
And can you, you know, I suppose in your commercial contract you might have a clause in there that says no rent is payable in advance because you don’t potentially want that surprise. Is that sort of something you’ve seen in the past? 

Julia Hartman
Yeah, it would be not surprising for a tenant to want to pay rent in advance in a good year. So it’s just something to watch out for.  

Ben Kingsley
But it potentially has to be agreeable by the landlord as part of those deals or no if it’s received in the bank account. Surprise surprise, you’ve got a little bit of extra tax to pay in that year. You’ve got a little bit of surplus cash that you didn’t expect coming.  

Julia Hartman
Yeah, it’s not all the windfall it’s made out to be.  

Ben Kingsley
Nah, true, true.  

Well there you have it folks, that’s obviously just a snippet… the highlights of some of that episode. If you want to listen to the full version of the episode, just go to the summary notes or the notes inside this episode, click on that link and you’ll get full access to the whole episode where we go a little bit deeper on the topics.  

Also before you go, if you don’t have a property specialist tax accountant and you are looking for one, of course this is where I say you may want to consider Empower Wealth. We obviously have a guarantee and that guarantee is the Maximum Refund Guarantee. So we’ll ensure you get the maximum refund possible for all of your investment property tax returns, and also your personal tax returns as well. So you can check that out by going to www.thepropertycouch.com.au/tax. Thanks for that and always remember, knowledge is empowering but only if you act on it.