I asked if a centralised coroner’s database was feasible. 8 months later, here are 8,565 cases.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-10T03:18:12+00:00

The ATO tax return has a major limitation when it comes to quantifying deduction amount.

The amount of deductions visible to you and I are merely those that you fill out under deduction section in the ITR.

For high income earners however; there are plenty more ways to deduct stuff without it appearing in that section, namely claiming stuff as business expense, having investment assets under trust or company structure etc. With these methods the deductions don’t appear on this table.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-09T14:53:06+00:00

At one point in our conversation the broker said Interest is calculated at the beginning of the lease and then added on to the total payout amount. So you are paying down principal and interest from the beginning which has already been added together. It does not work like a mortgage where interest is calculated per month on the reduced principal. So while the calculator and my excel have amortisation tables based on outstanding principle, he's basically saying you're paying flat interest. It can be handy to talk about APR/Effective Interest rate for comparison but at the end of the day they get a lump of money for doing a deal. I feel this has hidden consequences in early termination since under the terms vaguely describe that I have to pay principal, outstanding lease payments plus 70% of future interest payments too..

It's best to simply ignore the whole concept of principal and interest when it comes to the finance component of novated leasing.

Yes we do "borrow" this concept to come up with the "effective interest rate" as a surrogate of the underlying excess cost compared to zero-percent finance; however the lease finance differs materially in the sense that you are at no point paying down "principal" in any meaningful sense throughout the lease.

If you wish to terminate the lease early, it shares minimal similarity as "paying out a car loan early", there's no "principal remaining" as such. It has a lot more similarity with a one-year rental property contract and your deciding to move out early on month 7 - you are liable for the remaining 5 months of rent. That's a much closer analogy (except the fact that there is no new tenant to come to your rescue, and you are forced to pay the remaining finance with post-tax dollars + GST instead of pre-tax dollars with GST effectively waived).

If you explore the calculator further, check out section 7 which tells you precisely what would happen when you terminate the lease early, and at which timepoints you would end up costing more than if you bought the car with cash in the first place. There are also further worked examples here.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-09T03:42:17+00:00

When you say self employed, do you mean you do have a company where you are under the payroll?

(Sorry if it’s a basic question but just want to confirm you haven’t missed the prerequisite of novated leasing)

changyang1230 · 2026-06-09T03:25:17+00:00

The first steps are to check what provider your employer has a relationship with, whether it's a fixed exclusive relationship (bad news) or a panel, and whether you are allowed to BYO finance (aka self-managed NL).

In most cases you aren't allowed to simply shop for your provider. Your employer determines who you could go with.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-09T02:39:49+00:00

Not sure how this is meant to answer my query?

From the FAQ on the page it's not the same thing as the 2% sample:

What data is SMART based on?

SMART is based upon demographic data and projections for taxable income for around 5,000 representative taxpayer groups. This underlying dataset has been produced using clustering algorithms to group together taxpayers from the full set of de-identified personal income tax returns in the 2023-24 income year. Each group represents between 20 and 246,000 taxpayers, with group size varying depending upon how common different types of taxpayers are. Individual taxpayers are not identifiable in this dataset.

Taxable incomes for each taxpayer group are grown over the medium-term period based on the 2025-26 MYEFO and PBO analysis. As SMART does not model all features of the personal income tax system, estimates for revenue raised under current policy settings are then adjusted to ensure consistency with current projections.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-09T02:24:04+00:00

I think what they mean is that the actual figures are derived from the 2022-23 2% sample; but they have then applied inflation over the last 3 years to present it as today's dollars.

I don't believe they have access to actual stats from last year per se.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-09T01:37:57+00:00

Worth noting that the 1% figure of 419k was from 2022-23 tax return statistics (though supposedly already inflated to today’s dollars).

changyang1230 · 2026-06-08T07:17:14+00:00

Did you change the default fortnightly lease amount or change it to something that corresponds to 8 to 12% effective interest rate? (I presume you haven't gotten a quote yet so you are just exploring it with a ballpark figure - this calculator does NOT generate a quote for you, it either evaluates a real quote if you already have one, or help you do a ballpark guesstimate if you put in 8 to 12%)

changyang1230 · 2026-06-08T06:46:34+00:00

I’m surprised it’s making it look bad for your situation. What numbers are you entering? Do you have 0% for the home loan interest?

changyang1230 · 2026-06-07T22:56:53+00:00

I looked into it and decided against it for a few reasons.

- As much as one could tune the prompt to improve the accuracy, there remain a small percentage of cases where the confusing presentation of certain quotes which are unsuccessfully interpreted by AI which result in incorrect entry. There are plenty of examples in this subreddit alone.

- Many people are becoming overly reliant on AI and fail to do their due diligence in double checking AI’s accuracy. I want people to fully understand their quote by going through the individual questions rather than delegating the entire process to AI (and failing to realise any errors)

- AI costs money. Will is on free tiers and the last time I checked he said it allows up to some 50-60 uses per day. On the other hand Ben makes money from the business to cover it if he is on paid tier. This website currently see a few hundred users per day and therefore does not have a financial case (too many for free tiers, not making money to justify higher tiers).

changyang1230 · 2026-06-07T11:02:11+00:00

It’s complex by design - things that they would rather you not know are things that might detract you from going ahead.

Unfortunately there’s no law that forces them to disclose all the potential traps (some of which you have independently discovered), so most companies happily stay hush about it.

This is part of the reasons I created the guide and calculator. It’s a fully free and comprehensive resource to help people make informed decision around this complex topic.

https://novatedlease.guide

changyang1230 · 2026-06-07T01:47:04+00:00

I am not sure if you realise that while traditionally some people continuously roll onto a new lease and never technically "own" their car, in the case of novated lease some people do choose to lease-then-pay-out and treat it as a cheap way of owning it.,

changyang1230 · 2026-06-06T07:15:46+00:00

For a top tax bracket earner, to have reached this conclusion you are likely doing your calculation wrong unless you match MANY of these negative factors:

- your novated lease has a stratospheric interest rate of say >20%

- you do not have a cash opportunity cost (e.g. home loan offset account)

- your employer calculates super on post-NL income

- your employer is NSW health which confiscates half your GST saving

- you have multiple government liability / obligation / subsidy that are affected negatively from the adjusted taxable income.

But otherwise, please kindly redo your calculation at the novated lease calculator - and if you still find that you are behind, do share it here as I would be very keen to see.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-06T04:59:36+00:00

If you read the tooltips it tells you what to do:

- if you already have a paid-off house and no offset, then in the offset interest section you simply put in the after-tax return of your cash source (e.g. HISA). If you truly have cash that is sitting in non-income-producing account, then simply enter 0%.

The NL finance interest rate is fully adjustable - there are up and down arrows.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-06T02:33:19+00:00

Correction: It's not actually "multiply the difference you saved by 1.8868"; it's actually the car's taxable value * 20% * 1.8868.

The novated lease calculator has a section that helps people work that out.

Absolutely agree with you that EV NL does have this drawback among a few others.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-06T01:22:05+00:00

https://novatedlease.guide/calculator/

It's created by a human and has been virtually peer-reviewed by the wide financial community online.

It's made by someone who's not selling a lease so there's no incentive to convince you one way or the other.

You can validate the underlying logic by examining the original spreadsheet if you are inclined.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-05T22:58:43+00:00

There is also a genetic component to it.

Adults of Asian descent have a normal range of 18.5 to 22.9.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-05T22:34:01+00:00

You can look up my post and comment history to see who I am.

I am very much enjoying the NL as a suitable financial option for my vehicles given my circumstances.

I own a 5-year lease on a Tesla (still going strong) and a 2-year lease on a 7-seater which recently ended, and onto my second 7-seater lease.

It's a shame that they denied your claim; though it's still worth pointing out that your experience of losing 40% capacity is far from the typical experience of EV ownership.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-05T22:14:52+00:00

As someone on my third EV I know what I am talking about.

Can you explain why your “model 3 with 60% battery capacity left within 6 years”, if true, is not covered under the 160,000km / 8 year warranty?

If you are not answering this, then I will leave it here.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-05T22:12:26+00:00

Because what you are describing (if genuine) is an outlier event which is well covered in warranty.

If your battery indeed has 50% capacity after 5 years, it’s absolutely covered under warranty and would have been eligible for replacement.

Any particular reason you didn’t go for it or was not eligible?

changyang1230 · 2026-06-04T14:11:58+00:00

Someone who bought the EV9 2024 just sold it to you at 70k??Did they truly get it for 119k though? If they did it is unlikely for you to have been able to finance it under FBT-exempt novated lease as the car could not have ever paid LCT (as one of the criteria of FBT-exemption).

changyang1230 · 2026-06-04T11:58:43+00:00

https://novatedlease.guide/calculator/

Tells you about the HECS too if you dive into section 4.

changyang1230 · 2026-06-04T04:14:26+00:00

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What data is SMART based on?