EOFY Considerations for Property Investors

The lead-up to the end of the financial year is when most property investors think seriously about tax, but the conveyancing side of that thinking is often overlooked. When a sale settles, what a contract date actually locks in for tax purposes, and what records your accountant will ask for, all connect back to decisions made during the conveyancing process rather than after it. Getting this right before 30 June can save a genuinely stressful scramble once your accountant starts asking questions.

Why EOFY Matters Even If You Are Not Selling

Even investors with no plans to sell should use the EOFY period to review their holding costs, loan structure and any planned maintenance or improvement work. Repairs completed and paid for before 30 June are generally treated differently to a capital improvement started but not finished, and this distinction affects how the expense is claimed. If you are considering refinancing an investment property to release equity for a new purchase, EOFY is also a sensible time to review your loan structure with your broker, since interest deductibility depends on how the funds are used, not just which property secures the loan.

Timing a Sale Around 30 June

A common misunderstanding is that settlement date determines which financial year a sale falls into for capital gains tax purposes. In most cases it is the date you enter into the contract of sale, not the settlement date, that fixes the timing of the capital gains tax event. This means a contract signed in June with a September settlement is still generally treated as a sale in the financial year the contract was signed, even though no money has changed hands yet. This is general information rather than tax advice, and the specifics can vary with your situation, so it is worth confirming the treatment of your particular sale with your accountant before you exchange, not after.

Capital Gains Tax and Record Keeping

Whether a sale is treated as a capital gain or a capital loss, and how much of it is assessable, depends heavily on records that often sit with your conveyancer rather than your accountant, including settlement statements, stamp duty paid on purchase, and costs of any improvements made over your period of ownership. The ATO's guidance on capital gains tax when selling a rental property sets out what generally counts toward your cost base, and gathering this paperwork during the conveyancing process, rather than trying to reconstruct it months later, makes tax time considerably more straightforward. Our guide to tax time record keeping for property investors goes through this in more depth.

Converting a Home Into a Rental, or a Rental Into a Home

Investors who have lived in a property before renting it out, or who are considering moving into a former rental, should be aware that the main residence exemption has its own rules around timing and continuous ownership, covered in the ATO's page on eligibility for the main residence exemption. Changes of this kind are exactly the sort of thing worth flagging to your conveyancer at the time they happen, since the date a property changes use can matter as much as the date it changes hands.

Land Tax Runs on a Different Calendar

It is worth remembering that land tax is a state based, calendar year assessment in most jurisdictions, and is entirely separate from the financial year that governs income tax and capital gains tax. Ownership of a property at a particular midnight, rather than at 30 June, is generally what determines who is liable for land tax on it in a given assessment year, and this date differs from state to state. Investors sometimes assume EOFY planning covers land tax as well as income tax, and end up caught out by an assessment landing on the wrong side of a settlement date for entirely separate reasons. Confirming the relevant date with your conveyancer at the time of purchase avoids this confusion later.

Buying Before or After 30 June

Investors occasionally ask whether it is worth rushing to settle a residential purchase before 30 June to claim a few extra days of interest and holding cost deductions in the current financial year. In practice the benefit is usually marginal, since deductions only start once you actually own the property and it is genuinely available for rent, and rushing a settlement to hit an arbitrary date increases the risk of skipped due diligence. It is generally more valuable to complete a thorough investment property due diligence checklist properly than to shave a settlement date by a week for a small tax outcome.

Working With Your Accountant and Conveyancer Together

The investors who get the most value from EOFY planning are the ones who let their conveyancer and accountant talk to each other, or at least share the same settlement figures and contract documents, rather than treating conveyancing and tax as two unconnected processes. If you are purchasing property through a self managed super fund, this coordination becomes even more important, since our article on SMSF property purchase conveyancing considerations explains how the structure of the purchase itself needs to satisfy both compliance and lending requirements from day one.

None of this replaces personalised tax advice, but understanding how conveyancing timing and tax timing interact means fewer surprises when your return is finally prepared, and a clearer picture of what to organise before the financial year closes rather than after.