Australians are being forced to give up a 27‑year tax rule on capital gains. It’s worth a closer look.
The 2026/27 federal budget proposes replacing the 50% capital gains tax discount — affecting shares, property, and other personal investments. This is a place to read what is actually being proposed, and to put your view forward.
The 50% capital gains tax discount has been part of Australian tax law since 1999, when it replaced the older cost-base indexation method. For long-held assets — shares, investment properties, equity in a small business — it was designed to compensate for inflation, simplify the rules, and encourage longer-term investment over short-term speculation.
The 2026/27 federal budget proposes replacing that discount with cost-base indexation, and adding a new 30% minimum tax rate on capital gains. Both apply from 1 July 2027 to assets held outside the family home and outside superannuation. The stated aim is intergenerational fairness.
Young Australians — and others building wealth outside the property ladder through shares, small business, and other personal investments — are the cohort most directly affected, and also the cohort the reform is said to help. This site exists so the people in the middle of that contradiction can read the detail, see the working, and put a view on the record before the bill is drafted.
Labor ruled out these changes at the last election. The full record is here →
The long version.
Where the discount came from, what the proposed changes actually do, and how the numbers fall across asset classes. Every claim footnoted to its primary source.
What Australians are saying.
I can understand the CGT changes in relation to invest properties - something needs to change so we can ensure owning the roof over their head is still an option for our future generations. What I can’t get behind are the impacts of the proposed CGT changes on business owners and those who invest in the share market to try and get ahead. It feels like any avenue lower and middle class Australians try to access to build wealth for their family’s future is being yanked away.
It's disgraceful that the governments will be so apathetic to the state of general population. This is no reform, purely revenue generation.
Property is part of the Australian wealth-building opportunity. It's something where it doesn't matter whether you are a PAYG earner, doctors, nurses, teachers could use property to build wealth. What will they use now? I say property because I'm assuming they will roll back on CGT for shares and crypto etc. However what they have done is strip hardworking Australians of the opportunity to get ahead unless they build a business, which by the way will also be min CGT on exit now. Disincentivised.
I'd like to see real consultation with regional Australia. We aren't the people benefiting from inner-city policy debates. We carry the weight of them, though.
Promised one thing. Doing another. I'm not interested in what the Treasurer says now — I care about what was said in April. That's the standard.
I'm 29 and putting every spare dollar into a unit so I can eventually trade up. The whole point was that capital gains worked a certain way. Changing it mid-game punishes anyone trying to get ahead.