One of the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) big election promises in the 2019 federal election was to abolish negative gearing. It would be logical to think that the ALP’s shock election loss in 2019 will serve as a warning for policy makers. That is, banning negative gearing is an unpopular policy. However, I would caution investors against assuming that negative gearing is here to stay.
What is negative gearing?
Negative gearing allows investors to offset property investment losses against other taxable income (such as employment income) to reduce their tax liabilities.
For example, Colin is employed as a lawyer and earns $200,000 pre-tax. Colin’s employer correctly deducts $64,700 of tax. If Colin borrows $1 million to purchase an investment property, he expects to receive approximately $14,000 of rental income after all expenses (management fees, insurance, maintenance, etc.). The bank will charge him approximately $35,000 p.a. in interest. Therefore, the property will lose approximately $21,000 p.a. ($14k less $35k).
Colin will be able to offset that loss against his employment income to reduce his total taxable income to $179,000 ($200k less $21k). This will reduce his annual tax liability to $54,900, which is a saving of $9,800 p.a. As such, the after-tax cost of the property is $11,200 p.a. ($21k less tax saving of $9.8k). This is called a negative gearing benefit.
Why do people negatively gear?
The only reason that you would negatively gear is that you anticipate that the property’s capital growth will eventually dwarf its income losses.
Continuing with Colin’s example above, let’s consider the projected outcome after 20 years. Let’s assume the property continues to lose $11,200 per year which equates to $224,000 in total over 20 years. This assumes the rental income and interest rate do not change for 20 years, which of course is highly unlikely, but for the sake of simplicity, lets continue. If Colin’s investment property appreciated in value by 7% p.a. on average, it will be worth over $3.8 million in 20 years. After capital gains tax, Colin would have accumulated almost $2.2 million of equity in return for losing $224,000 of income. Most would agree that this is a good financial outcome for Colin.
In short, investors use negative gearing on the expectation that the capital returns generated by an investment (often property), will substantially offset any after-tax income
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