Capital gains tax discount to cost Australia $250bn over next decade with retirees and high-income earners to benefit most | Tax
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/05/capital-gains-tax-discount-to-cost-australia-250bn-over-next-decade-with-retirees-and-high-income-earners-to-benefit-most
22 Comments
Note that the figures quoted in the article are for all investments, not just properties, I can’t find information on how it’s split between different asset types.
Personally I think we should change it back to indexation as the fairest way. The CGT discount is meant to account for inflation, so using CPI to calculate the cost base makes the most sense. All discount percentages are arbitrary, and is not a fair approach.
robbing the poor to feed the rich
They will get grandfathered in anyway so don’t lose any sleep people. That 250B is still going to go up in smoke.
The smell is in the air. Suddenly there’s news stories about Capital Gains Tax and hints of big action on housing. Trial balloons are being floated. I have hope, but I’ve been disappointed so many times before.
Yes, we need more opinion pieces espousing the benefits of change. Get ahead of the inevitable scare campaign, please!
Although I think a focus on housing would be better (at least give us those figures).
The biggest tax discount is tax free capital gains on PPOR but we can never talk about that. 🙃
It really only penalises the multi property investors if it gets abolished. You still don’t pay any cgt on your ppor, which includes the 6 year rule and rent vesting.
Just end speculation on housing.
Should still exist for australian shares to encourage investment in local businesses and industries. Or just go back to indexing
Two things wrong with that headline:
It’s not a cost. Costs are things you pay out. This is money the government won’t collect out of people’s incomes.
And that leads to the second problem: when you’re talking about collecting less tax, of course it’s going to be high-earners who benefit most because they pay the most tax.
The headline frames this as the government handing over money to the best-off. In reality, it’s high earners handing over a bit less money to the government.
Im hoping Labor can form decent policy on this, dont have alot of confidence but this is literally their best opportunity to pass future changing legislation
Rich get richer poor get poorer and somehow labour rusties say they’re different from the liberals.
Medicare Dental is estimated to cost $16B per year. I know which one I’d rather have.
But but but but….. immigration
Removing the CGT discount will just result in people holding assets for even longer. Not much benefit in selling if you have a massive unrealised gain to pay tax on compared to if you would have received a 50% discount on that gain. Investors will just sub-optimally hold assets for longer to avoid/delay the larger tax, resulting in assets being traded less frequently and less supply for everyone else.
And how much will ndis cost over the next decade?
So less than NDIS
That’s about what Medicare needs over 10 years. Just sayin….
$250billion spent on no productivity. No justification at any level for this.
Disclosure: I have substantial gains on share investments.
How much will the NDIS cost?
Am I wrong in feeling that the CGT discount debate is being framed very selectively? Headlines like “it’s costing $X” feel grabby and potentially misleading, given that forgone revenue isn’t the same thing as spending.
It also seems like the rationale keeps shifting. Sometimes CGT reform is framed as a housing policy, sometimes as a tax base problem, sometimes as fairness, all of which are related, but not the same argument.
If this is genuinely about repairing the tax base, then it feels reasonable to ask: what problem are we trying to fund or solve, and why is CGT the preferred lever over other, less politically palatable options like resource rent taxes?
I’m not saying CGT shouldn’t be reformed, just that the justification matters, and right now it feels a bit muddled.
Dental would between $5.6 billion and $8 billion annually – time to stop the rorts!