Offsetting losses

As the property is jointly owned, you must share the income and expenses equally.

Jilly,
       Don't be afraid to try again or change your approach,
I had a similar situation. Except I am a man but I went to uni 7 years ago and spent 3 years completing a degree and then at 36 years of age I found no one would employ me so I got fed up and have been a house dad for 4 years so that's  7 years of one wage.
I had two properties . One was negatively geared and the other wasn't.
I managed to cover the shortfall for about 3.5 years but when I realised I was not likely to be employed I sold the negatively geared property.
I had to pay capital gains tax on our profit and then had to pay back some of my Aus study as a capital gain is deemed as an income by Centre link. Strange when a capital loss is not deemed as an income reduction.

Then to my astonishment I was told by Centrelink that a negatively geared property is actually an income according to Centrelink.
Centrelink told me it was because you get a tax refund so I said how does that work when I have zero income and then they said but your wife gets 50% of the refund. So after I hang up on them I realised that even if that is the case the refund is 50% loss times 30% tax being 15% of the negative geared amount not 100% as Centrelink deems it to be.
This is one of the main reasons why I sold my negative geared property.
As well as you only can claim about 30% if your top marginal tax rate is 30% – times 50% ownership in your situation thats 15% you can claim.

So if you are getting parenting payments or New Start allowance the negative income may be deemed as income by Centrelink.

So now I own one positively geared property which will be paid for in about 12 months and then I will buy another property and use the income from the first and second to cover the costs of both properties. So the second property could be negatively geared but across both properties they will be cash flow neutral or slightly positive.

So your situation has changed and you may have to change your approach.

Or look for some other way to split his income to yourself??

It would depend whether he was a PAYE (employee) or PAYG (contractor/self-employed). PAYG = no chance, PAYG may be some chance to income split – best to speak to your accountant.

Hi

Our properties are all 50/50 and although we have to split the interest and income 50/50, my accountant does allocate the repairs and maintenance plus a few other expenses solely to my income (me being an employee who can't reduce my income substantially whilst he is self employed). It may be worth checking with an accountant as to what expenses your husband can claim 100% of.

Joint tenancy. But i double checked with my accountant and it is def okay for me to have 100% of the repairs and maintenance. We have to split the income and interest as per our 50/50 split.