How to claim cost of planning a renovation?

I'm studying the viability of a modification to an investment property. So far, I have only spent a couple of hundred dollars on fees for photocopies of plans from the local council and title office. I was also advised to undertake a feature level and/or re-establishment survey.

Let's suppose for any reason (council advice, budget/finance constrains) I find out such modification is not advantageous after all. I would drop the plan but have been incurred about $2000 but no improvement would be actually made.

Would this amount be claimable in any way? Capital expense?

If not, can I at least use borrowed money from my equity LOC to pay for those and claim the interest?

 

Are you the famous uni student getting around?? sounds very uni like

If you have an investment property you'd have a fair idea of what you could/couldn't do so unlikely you'd spend 2k on planning something that won't go ahead, or you'd tweak it so it could go ahead.

I'm not a tax expert so can't help you

Good luck with it

 

This may or may not be capital expense. You would have to have a look at s110-25 ITAA97 and see if it could fall into one of the 5 elements of a cost base. - I don't think it would off the top of my head.

 

Its possible some of the costs are preliminary to the proposal which would be a CGT cost. A QS report BEFORE you start and after will identify any scrapping deduction available.