Do lenders look at my company financials or just my personal tax returns?
It depends on the lender — and that difference is enormous for company directors. Some lenders assess only your personal tax return, ignoring profit retained inside your company. Others include retained company profits and director wages for a controlling director, which can dramatically increase your assessable income. If you pay yourself a modest salary and retain profit to grow the business, the lender you choose decides whether that profit counts.
The trap most brokers miss
The trap is being assessed on your personal return alone when the money is sitting in your company. A payslip-only broker sees your director salary, not the business’s profit, and quotes a borrowing power far below your real capacity — or declines you outright.
What you actually need
- Personal tax returns and notices of assessment
- Company financial statements — profit & loss and balance sheet
- Company tax returns and, where relevant, evidence you are a controlling director
- A broker who reads company and personal position together
Illustrative scenarios
Teaching examples built from typical situations to show how we approach the problem. Numbers only, never names.
Company director — profits retained in the business
A director paid themselves a modest $70,000 salary while the company retained about $120,000 in net profit to fund growth.
A lender looking only at the personal tax return saw $70,000 and ignored the retained company profit the director could access.
We prepared company and personal financials together and selected a lender that includes retained profits and director wages for a controlling director.
Assessable income was recognised at closer to $175,000, materially changing the borrowing outcome — an illustrative example of reading company financials, not just the personal return.
Illustrative example only. This is a teaching scenario built from typical borrower situations to show how we approach the problem — not a record of a specific client, and not a prediction of your result. Your outcome depends on your lender, your financials and current lending policy.
Cafe owner — low taxable income, strong add-backs
A hospitality business owner showed taxable income of about $48,000 after depreciation, a one-off equipment write-off and interest on a business loan. A bank had assessed borrowing power at roughly $310,000.
The headline taxable figure understated real cashflow. A payslip-only assessment treated legitimate non-cash and one-off deductions as if the money had genuinely left the business.
We read the full financials, added back depreciation, the non-recurring write-off and a portion of interest, then presented a reconstructed servicing position to a lender that assesses add-backs favourably.
Assessable income was re-presented at about $92,000, lifting modelled borrowing power to around $560,000 with the right lender — an illustrative uplift of roughly $250,000 versus the payslip-only view.
Illustrative example only. This is a teaching scenario built from typical borrower situations to show how we approach the problem — not a record of a specific client, and not a prediction of your result. Your outcome depends on your lender, your financials and current lending policy.
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