Model your investment property end-to-end — purchase costs, holding cashflow, tax structure, and the actual cash you'll keep after sale. Compare personal name vs trust vs company, see how leverage affects ROI, and stress-test against the proposed Budget 2026 changes.
Save the current scenario, then play with different inputs to model another property. Compare them side-by-side. Saved on this device only — clearing your browser data will remove them.
The Real Return started as a CGT calculator. It's becoming a complete pre-purchase and ownership decision tool. Here's what's on the way.
Personal vs trust vs company, full CGT calc, negative gearing, land tax by state, depreciation, beneficiary streaming, trapped losses — all in one view.
Save scenarios to your browser, compare multiple properties side-by-side, see blended ROI across the portfolio.
Sign in with email, sync your portfolio across phone and desktop, share with your accountant or buyer's agent.
The companion calculator. Model how diversifying entities across multiple lenders can multiply your total borrowing capacity — the strategy serious portfolio builders use to keep buying past one lender's ceiling.
Model the impact of refinancing, equity release for the next purchase, P&I-to-IO switches, fixed-rate rollovers.
Reverse-engineer your future portfolio. Set a passive-income or net-worth goal, model how many properties (and what mix of structures) gets you there, year by year.
The "can I actually afford to hold this?" deep dive. Full upfront costs (stamp duty, LMI, inspections, BA fees, buffer), realistic cashflow with vacancy events, rate-rise stress tests.
What if rates rise 1.5%? What if you're vacant 3 months? What if strata levies double? Stress-test any scenario to see whether your deal survives the bad years, not just the good ones.
Most calculators show depreciation as free tax savings. Few show what happens at sale — the cost-base clawback that quietly erodes your gain. Model the full lifecycle, not just the good half.
Turning your home into a rental? The 6-year absence rule, cost-base reset, partial exemption math — modelled honestly. Most investors get this wrong by tens of thousands.
Considering an SMSF for property? LRBA borrowing rules, contribution caps, in-house asset constraints, the actual numbers — without the spruiker spin.
Curated answers to the questions investors ask most often — about tax structures, negative gearing, holding costs, and the proposed Budget 2026 changes. Click any question to expand.
Take-home profit = (sale price − selling costs − loan payout − CGT) + cumulative after-tax cashflow − cash invested.
It accounts for:
The same definition runs through the hero, the compare cards, and the structure comparison table — every dollar figure ties back to this formula.
ROI on cash is the annualised return on your actual deposit — not the return on the property's total value. It's the most honest measure of how your money performed.
Formula: ((take-home profit + cash invested) / cash invested) ^ (1/years held) − 1.
It already captures all the leverage. If a property grows 5.5% p.a. but your deposit is only 20% of the purchase price, your levered return on that deposit can easily exceed 12-15% p.a. — that's the magic of borrowing to buy an appreciating asset. The "Leverage effect" stat in the hero shows the gap between property growth and ROI on cash.
Under current law, individuals (and trust beneficiaries) who hold a CGT asset for more than 12 months pay tax on only half the capital gain at their marginal rate. Companies don't get this discount.
The 12 May 2026 Federal Budget announced that from 1 July 2027, the 50% discount will be replaced with an inflation adjustment: only the real (above-CPI) portion of the gain is taxed. For low-inflation periods this is broadly similar to the 50% discount; for periods of high inflation it can be more generous.
For sales spanning the 1 July 2027 cutoff, the calculator splits the gain proportionally — pre-cutoff days use the 50% discount, post-cutoff days use the inflation adjustment.
Status: announced, not yet legislated.
The calculator uses published 2025-26 investor (non-FHB) rates for each state and territory:
The figure is auto-populated when you change purchase price or state, and is editable if you have the exact figure from your conveyancer. Foreign purchaser surcharges (typically 8-9%) are not included — let your accountant know if those apply to you.
Land tax is assessed annually on the land value (not purchase price) of all the property you own in that state. The calculator estimates land value at 60% of purchase price by default — edit it if you have the council valuation.
Entity matters significantly because most states penalise trusts:
The "Other land already held" field lets you aggregate. Land tax is calculated on your total land in that state, with the marginal portion attributed to this property.
Three reasons stack up:
Trusts still make sense for asset protection, estate planning, and positively-geared portfolios. For a single negatively-geared property, personal ownership is usually more tax-efficient.
Announced in the 2026 Budget, effective 1 July 2028. The trustee of a discretionary trust will pay a minimum 30% tax on distributions to beneficiaries. Beneficiaries receive a non-refundable credit for that tax.
Practical effect:
The calculator applies this floor automatically for sales/distributions on or after 1 July 2028. Excluded trust types (fixed, testamentary, charitable) aren't modelled.
Status: announced, not yet legislated.
When a trust or company has more deductions than income (typical for negatively-geared property), the resulting loss is trapped inside that entity. It can't reduce your personal tax bill — that's the entire trade-off of using a trust or company structure.
The trapped loss can be recovered by future income in the same entity:
Key constraint: trust revenue losses generally can't offset capital gains. They sit in different tax buckets. So a $200k capital gain on sale won't absorb $85k of accumulated rental losses — those losses keep waiting for future revenue income.
If the trust is wound up before generating enough revenue to absorb the losses, they expire unused.
Yes — this is one of the legitimate ways to recover trapped revenue losses. Business profits generated inside the same trust are revenue income, and the carry-forward losses can offset them.
Caveats:
Always get specific advice from your accountant before relying on this.
Generally no. Each trust is its own tax entity. Losses can't be moved between trusts, and you can't simply route profits through a loss-trust to absorb them. The ATO specifically prevents this via anti-avoidance rules (Part IVA, income injection test).
Limited exceptions exist:
This is exactly the kind of question to take to a tax adviser who specialises in trusts.
Yes — depreciation is a tax deduction in all three structures. What differs is what happens to the resulting loss:
So depreciation is structurally most valuable for personal investors who can monetise the loss every year.
No. This is a general-information tool for understanding how the proposed Budget 2026 changes might affect property investment outcomes if they pass Parliament. It uses simplified assumptions (interest-only loans, average annual figures, standard rates) and doesn't model many edge cases — foreign purchaser surcharges, first-home buyer concessions, PPOR exemptions, fixed-trust treatment, division 7A loans, fringe benefits tax, and many others.
Before making any investment, structure, or tax decision, speak to a licensed financial adviser, accountant, or solicitor who can review your full personal circumstances. The calculator is the intellectual property of Emil Josef and is provided as a thinking aid, not a substitute for professional advice.