By Leith van Onselen
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) today released its Taxation Statistics for the 2009-10 financial year, which once again revealed that Australia has become a nation of loss-making landlords.
Below are the key tables from the ATO release. First, the summary of rental deductions for the 2009-10 and 2008-09 financial years:
According to the ATO, there were a total of 1.75 million property investors in 2009-10 claiming aggregate rental losses of $4,810 million, or $2,746 each.
Next is a table showing the breakdown of investors by income bracket, split-out by negatively geared (loss-making) and positively geared:
Some interesting (worrying?) facts can be deduced from the above data:
- 1 in 7 Australian taxpayers are a property investor (either negatively geared or positively geared);
- 1 in 11 Australian taxpayers are negatively geared, representing 63% of property investors;
- 74% (825,284) of negatively geared investors earned less than $80,000 in 2009-10; and
- The average loss for a negatively geared property investor in 2009-10 was $9,132.
The big question remains: with Australian housing values down over 5% since 2009-10, and with the outlook for capital growth subdued, will Australia’s 825,000 middle to lower income earners continue pay their property a dividend in the hope that it repays them with capital growth?
