Own name, company or trust: how a Queensland rental can be held

In this article

Written by

Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →

Every contract to buy an investment property has a line for the buyer's name, and what goes on that line is one of the few decisions in property that is expensive to reverse. The buyer can be a person, two people, a company, the trustee of a family trust or the trustee of a superannuation fund. The house, the tenant and the rent are the same in each case. The tax is not.

The choice has become harder to make by habit. The federal law passed in June 2026 changes how rental losses and capital gains are treated from 1 July 2027, and it does not treat every kind of owner alike. Queensland, for its part, has always taxed land held by companies and trustees more heavily than land held by individuals. This guide sets the main structures side by side, using the rules published by the Australian Taxation Office and the Queensland Revenue Office. It describes how each structure is treated. It does not say which one suits a particular investor, which depends on income, family, borrowing and plans that no general guide can know.

Queensland Revenue Office land tax rates; Australian Taxation Office, CGT discount, updated 29 June 2026.

Four ways to hold the same property

The registered owner is whoever appears on the title. A title search shows that name, and where there are two or more owners it shows how they hold: as joint tenants, who own the whole together, or as tenants in common, who each hold a stated share.

Behind that name can sit different arrangements. A company is a separate legal person that owns the property itself. A trust is not a legal person at all: the trustee, which may be an individual or a company, is the registered owner and holds the property for the beneficiaries. A self-managed superannuation fund is a kind of trust with its own rules.

The rest of this guide takes each column in turn.

Own name, alone or with someone else

Most rental properties in Australia are held by individuals. The reason is in the first column of the table. When a person owns a rental that costs more to hold than it earns, the loss comes off that person's other income, usually wages, and reduces the tax on it. That is what negative gearing means.

Where two people own together, the ATO's rule is that each declares income and expenses according to their legal interest in the property. Joint tenants each report half. Tenants in common report in proportion to the shares on the title. The split follows ownership, whoever pays the bills and whoever earns more, and an agreement between the owners to divide it differently has no effect for tax.

That makes the form of co-ownership a tax decision as well as a property one. A couple on very different incomes who buy as joint tenants will each claim half of any loss, and each be taxed on half of any gain, for as long as they own it. Buying as tenants in common in unequal shares changes the split, and it also changes what each owns.

An individual owner also has the simplest dealings with a lender, the lowest running costs, since there is no separate set of accounts or tax return, and the most favourable land tax schedule. The disadvantage usually mentioned is that the property is in the owner's own name if they are ever sued, and that the income cannot be directed to anyone else.

A company

A company that buys a rental property owns it outright. The shareholders own the company, not the house.

Three tax consequences follow from that separation. A rental loss belongs to the company. It does not flow out to the shareholders to reduce their salaries, so the main benefit of negative gearing is not available in the ordinary way. A profit is taxed in the company at the company rate, and reaches the shareholders only when it is paid out as a dividend.

The third consequence is at sale. The ATO's page on the capital gains tax discount, updated on 29 June 2026, is unambiguous: an individual who has owned an asset for at least 12 months can reduce a capital gain by 50 per cent, an Australian trust can do the same, a complying super fund can reduce it by 33.33 per cent, and a company cannot use the discount. On an asset bought for its growth in value, that has long been the main argument against a company.

In Queensland a company also meets land tax sooner. It pays from a taxable land value of $350,000, against $600,000 for an individual, and at a higher starting rate. And it cannot live in a house, so the concessions and exemptions built around a home are closed to it.

Companies do hold residential property, typically where the owners want profits retained and reinvested at the company rate, or where the property belongs with a business. For a single rental expected to run at a loss in its early years, the structure works against the usual plan.

A trust

A trust separates the legal owner from the people who benefit. The trustee is on the title. The trust deed says who the beneficiaries are and how income may be divided among them. In a discretionary trust, the kind usually called a family trust, the trustee decides each year which beneficiaries receive the income.

That flexibility is the attraction when a property makes money. Net rent can be distributed to family members on lower tax rates, and a capital gain keeps the 50 per cent discount under the rules as they stand, according to the ATO.

It is the reverse when a property loses money.

A negatively geared property in a family trust therefore produces a loss that waits inside the trust until the trust has income to absorb it. If the trust owns nothing else, that means waiting until the rent exceeds the costs or the property is sold. The ATO notes that the tests for carrying losses forward differ for fixed, non-fixed and excepted trusts, and that a family trust with a valid election in place is generally outside them, with an exception for certain income injection arrangements.

A trust also has running costs: a deed, usually a company to act as trustee, annual accounts, a tax return and resolutions that have to be made on time. Lenders treat trust borrowers with more formality and usually ask for personal guarantees.

Land tax: two thresholds

Land tax is where Queensland, not the Commonwealth, distinguishes between owners, and the distinction is large.

The Revenue Office assesses land tax on the freehold land a person or entity owns in Queensland at midnight on 30 June. An individual pays when the total taxable value is $600,000 or more: $500 plus 1 cent for each dollar above $600,000 up to $999,999, then $4,500 plus 1.65 cents for each dollar above $1 million up to $2,999,999. A company or trustee pays from $350,000: $1,450 plus 1.7 cents for each dollar above $350,000 up to $2,249,999.

Below $600,000 the gap is absolute. Land with a taxable value of $450,000 costs an individual nothing and a company or trustee $3,150 a year. The tax is on land value, not the value of the building, so a unit, with a small share of the land under the block, is less exposed than a house.

The home exemption shows the same pattern. An individual's home may be exempt. A trustee can claim the exemption only in narrow circumstances: the Revenue Office's page, updated on 16 September 2026, requires that the land be occupied as the home of all the beneficiaries of the trust, who must have no other principal place of residence. A trust with a corporate beneficiary is not eligible even if it has other beneficiaries, and nor is the trustee of a foreign trust.

Over a long holding period this is the cost of a trust or company that is easiest to underestimate, because it arrives every year whether or not the property makes money.

Rental losses under the 2026 law

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 received assent on 26 June 2026. From 1 July 2027 it limits negative gearing on residential property to new builds. A loss on an established home bought after 7.30pm on 12 May 2026 can be used only against rental income, with the unused part carried forward. Properties owned at that moment keep their existing treatment.

The ATO's summary says the reforms affect individuals, trusts and partnerships. The law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, summarising the bill, identified two carve-outs: widely held unit trusts and complying superannuation funds.

For the choice of structure, the change narrows a gap. The main tax advantage of holding in one's own name has been the ability to set a rental loss against wages. For an established property bought now, that advantage ends on 1 July 2027: the individual's loss will be quarantined against rental income, much as a loss in a trust or company has always been confined to the entity.

The gap does not close. An individual with two rentals can still use a loss on one against a profit on the other. A new build keeps the deduction against wages in individual hands. And every property held before Budget night is untouched. But an investor who rejected a trust three years ago because the losses would be trapped is no longer comparing the same two things.

The detailed rules are still arriving. Treasury released draft legislation for the second tranche of the changes in August, including the definition of a new dwelling, and the ATO's reform page is where settled detail will appear.

Capital gains at sale

The same Act changes capital gains tax from 1 July 2027, and again the treatment depends on who owns the asset.

The ATO's summary is that the 50 per cent discount is replaced by cost base indexation and a 30 per cent minimum tax on capital gains, applying only to gains that accrue after 1 July 2027. Corrs' summary of the bill described the indexation as available to resident individuals, trusts and partnerships, and the minimum tax as applying to resident individuals. The Budget papers add that investors in new builds may choose between the existing discount and the new arrangements.

Companies were never entitled to the discount, so its replacement does not change their position. The comparison that used to run strongly against a company, a full gain taxed at the company rate against half a gain taxed in an individual's hands, becomes a comparison between the company rate on the full gain and an individual's tax on an inflation-adjusted gain with a floor under it. Which is larger will depend on how long the asset is held, how much of the gain is inflation and what the individual's other income is.

For foreign and temporary residents the starting point is different again. The ATO says the full discount has not been available on gains made by foreign or temporary residents after 8 May 2012.

Super funds

A self-managed superannuation fund can own residential investment property, and the table shows why some investors have used one: a complying fund gets a one-third discount on capital gains and is taxed on its income at concessional rates set by superannuation law.

The route has narrowed. As part of the agreement that carried the tax changes through the Senate, new borrowing by super funds to buy residential property was ended, and trade press reported the cut-off as 10 August 2026. A fund that already holds a property under an existing loan is in a different position from one hoping to buy with borrowed money now. A fund with enough cash to buy outright is not affected by the lending change.

Complying super funds are one of the two carve-outs from the negative gearing limit that Corrs identified in the bill. That matters less than it sounds, since a loss in a fund has always stayed in the fund.

Property in super is also subject to rules that have nothing to do with tax, about who may use it and when the money can be reached. Those rules are outside this guide and are a matter for a licensed adviser.

Foreign ownership inside a structure

A company or trust can be treated as foreign by Queensland even when it is Australian on paper, and the consequence is a surcharge at purchase and another every year.

The Revenue Office applies additional foreign acquirer duty to residential land acquired by a foreign person, and its definitions reach companies and trusts. A company is a foreign corporation if it is incorporated outside Australia or if foreign persons hold a controlling interest of at least 50 per cent. A trust is a foreign trust if at least 50 per cent of the interests in it are held by foreign persons. The land tax surcharge follows similar definitions, and the Revenue Office's rate page puts it at 3 per cent of taxable value above $350,000 for foreign companies and trusts.

A discretionary trust is the structure most at risk of being caught by accident, because its deed may name a wide class of possible beneficiaries, some of whom live overseas or hold foreign citizenship. Whether a particular deed produces a foreign trust is a legal question about its wording. It should be answered before the trustee signs a contract, because the duty is assessed on the transaction.

Changing your mind later

Moving a property from one holder to another is not an administrative step. A transfer from an individual to their own company, or from a company to a family trust, is a change of owner. The property has been disposed of by one and acquired by the other.

Two taxes respond to that. The outgoing owner has disposed of an asset, which is the kind of event capital gains tax applies to. And Queensland charges transfer duty on the acquisition. The Revenue Office's guidance on trusts lists the creation and termination of trusts and the acquisition and surrender of trust interests among the transactions on which duty can apply, alongside a short list of exempt trust transactions.

The practical result is that restructuring a property that has risen in value can cost a large share of the benefit sought. That is why the buyer's name on the first contract matters so much, and why the question belongs before the offer and not after settlement.

Questions to settle before the contract

A general comparison cannot choose a structure, but it can show which facts decide the answer. Five of them do most of the work.

1. Will the property run at a loss, and for how long? Losses are usable soonest in individual hands, within the limits that begin in 2027.
2. Is the property new or established, and when is it being bought? The answer fixes which loss and gains rules apply.
3. What is the land worth, and what other Queensland land does the buyer hold? That sets the land tax under each schedule.
4. Who is meant to receive the income in ten years' time? Flexibility is what a trust offers and an individual title does not.
5. Could any owner, shareholder or beneficiary be a foreign person under Queensland's definitions?

Each has a factual answer that an accountant and a solicitor can test against the rules above. The time to ask is before the contract is prepared, since the name on it is the one that will be registered.

A structure does not make a property a better investment. It decides who pays tax on it, when, and at what rate, and it is far cheaper to decide once.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →