Just think of the trust as a separate person.

1. If you buy a property and it is running at a loss how would you cover it? You would have to borrow more money or to use savings etc to cover the loss.

2. If you borrow money for investment the interest would be deductible. same with the trust.
If someone gifts money to someone else any interest on this money if it is borrowed wouldn't be deductible as there is no return. same with the trust.

3 You are talking about the trust. The company is just the trustee and legal owner. it is the trust that will have the loss and it should be able to be carried forward. But you need to ask your accountant about making family trust elections if this is the case.

4. Company can't but the trust can.

5. the loss won't be paid back to the ATO as the trust hasn't borrowed from the ATO. Any income can be used to offset any accumulated losses.

A LLC is a type of American company structure so you would have to set it up in America.

You would need to comply with american corporations law re the transferring of money – remember a company is a separate legal entity so you can't just take its money as if it was your own. As long as you are doing it properly you would not want to transfer too often as the fees will eat up a lot of it. Try to keep any profits there and then send them home once per year or keep reinvesting.

You also need to consider the initial sum used to start it off – do you lend it to the company, gift it or will it be share capital. You need to be aware of american company law, tax law, bankruptcy/insolvency laws as well as australian.

A LLC is an american entity so the company would be paying tax there. The ATO may also want to know about this and may tax you again here, depending on how it is set up, but you may get a tax credit for some or all of the tax paid over there. I imagine you would need company tax returns in america as well as individual tax returns and then individual tax returns here too.

I remember there used to be living away from home allowances or tax concessions

I would probably refinance the original loan and split it into claimable portions. eg if only the interest on the $85k relates to the property make this one split. and the private stuff another split. Both should be IO.

Then, if you have enough equity, make a third split in the form of a LOC and use that as deposit for the next property. borrow the remaining 80% as a new IO loan.

Make sure your main residence loan is IO and have a 100% offset account attached to this.

You should not pay PI on an investment while you have personal debt – otherwise you will be throwing away tax.

Yes it is possible. But the interest on the extra borrowings will only be deductible if they are used for investment purposes. in your eg the $180,000 – what will it be used for?

Redraw = borrow.

So if you redraw money and then refinance with another bank this won’t change anything. The extra portion is still borrowed and the interest on this portion will only be deductible if you use it for investment related stuff.

I would advise you to get an offset account asap and avoid the problems.

You could argue that you are trustee for the other 2. This is what you are really. But you may have trouble proving this to the satisfaction of the office of state revenue – if you could you would avoid stamp duty on transferring their shares of the others back to their names.

Another option is to make a declaration of trust now, leave it in your name with you as trustee for the other 2, For tax purposes it would be considered to be each as owning their shares. If you make a new declaration of trust then stamp duty would apply.

For the rent, i would think you could divide the market rent by 3 and you take your share

You would have given the solicitor and the CU an interest in your property so as to enable them to put a writ on the property. This was probably drafted into the agreements you signed.

It depends on what sort of people. If one family unit a discretionary trust may be worth looking at. If bunches of separate people this may not work well (as the trustee has discretion on who to give income to) so you may want to look at unit trusts (which will enable the 50% CGT discount) or companies (Which won’t)..

If you do use a unit or a company then look at a discretionary trust owning the units or shares.