Should I Sell Before 30 June 2027? CGT Reform Decision Guide for Investors

General information only. This is not tax or financial advice. Consult a registered tax agent for advice specific to your situation.

Walk into any investor Facebook group, Reddit thread, or accountant’s waiting room in the second half of 2026 and you’ll hear the same question on a loop: Should I sell before 30 June 2027 to lock in the 50% CGT discount? It is, by some margin, Australia’s most-searched investment question of the post-Budget cycle — and the legislation that passed in June 2026 (Acts 49 and 50 of 2026, royal assent 26 June 2026) largely answers it for you.

The single most important feature of the final law is the Subdivision 112-E deemed sale: every CGT asset you hold at 30 June 2027 is deemed sold and reacquired just before 1 July 2027. The gain accrued to that date is calculated under the OLD rules — 50% discount intact — and deferred until you actually sell. In plain terms: you cannot “lose” the discount on growth you’ve already banked by holding. The discount on your accrued gain is preserved automatically; only growth after 1 July 2027 falls under the new indexation-plus-30%-minimum regime, and that’s true whether you sell in 2028 or 2038.

That transforms the decision. For nearly everyone the answer is no, don’t accelerate — and the case is even stronger than it was under the Budget-era commentary, which assumed a time-apportioned split that diluted your discount the longer you held. This guide walks through the updated decision in plain Aussie English: a five-question framework, the timeline that matters, the math that decides it, and four worked examples covering the most common situations — property, shares, crypto, and a small business owner near retirement.

The short version: Under the law as passed, holding does NOT forfeit the 50% discount on gains accrued to 30 June 2027 — the deemed sale locks it in, deferred to your actual sale. Selling early buys you almost nothing on the gain you’ve already made; it just pays the tax sooner and burns transaction costs. The residual reasons to sell in 2026-27 are narrow: marginal-rate timing (your MTR is unusually low this year and will rise), or you were selling anyway. Otherwise: hold, and make sure you have evidence of each asset’s market value at 1 July 2027 — that valuation now controls your future tax split.

For the cross-asset overview and Treasury’s source examples, see the master article: 50% CGT Discount Reform: Cost Base Indexation + 30% Minimum Tax from 1 July 2027. For asset-specific deep dives, see the property, shares, ETFs, crypto, and small business companion articles linked at the bottom.

The five-question decision framework

Most “should I accelerate?” questions resolve in under five minutes if you work through these five gates in order. If you answer NO at any gate, the answer is almost always “don’t accelerate, just hold.” If you answer YES across most of them, run the numbers in the CGT Scenario Compare tool before acting.

Q1 — Were you already planning to sell this asset within the next 1–2 years anyway?

This is still the single most important question. If your existing plan was to sell in 2028, 2029, or beyond, accelerating means bringing a tax event forward by years — paying tax now that you wouldn’t have paid for ages, and giving up however many years of compounding on the after-tax-now proceeds. And under the final law the old rationale for accelerating has collapsed: the deemed sale preserves the discount on your accrued gain whether you sell in 2027 or 2037. That trade almost never wins now.

If your plan was already to sell in 2027 or early 2028 — to fund a retirement, a house deposit, a business buy-in, a divorce settlement — selling before 30 June 2027 keeps the paperwork simpler (no split calculation) and taxes the gain at this year’s marginal rate. That’s a convenience and MTR-timing question, not a cliff.

Q2 — Is your expected gain mostly already accrued, or mostly ahead of you?

Under the deemed-sale transition, the reform only changes the tax on growth after 1 July 2027. Growth already banked keeps the 50% discount (deferred) no matter when you sell. So the real question isn’t “how big is my legacy share and how fast is it shrinking” — it’s fixed in dollar terms at the 1 July 2027 valuation — but “how much future growth do I expect, and how will the new rules treat it?”

And here’s the kicker: future growth falls under the new rules regardless of what you do now. You can’t preserve old-rules treatment on gains you haven’t made yet — selling early just means you don’t make them at all. The only lever the reform leaves you on future growth is asset selection (e.g. new residential dwellings keep the discount) and holding structure (super’s treatment is unchanged), not timing.

Q3 — Will your marginal tax rate be lower in 2026–27 than in your likely sale year?

The deferred legacy gain is taxed at your marginal rate in the year you actually sell. If your MTR is unusually low right now (career break, parental leave, pre-retirement dip) and will be materially higher when you’d otherwise sell, crystallising the discounted gain at today’s low rate can genuinely win. This is now the main legitimate accelerate case.

Separately, the 30% minimum tax binds on post-2027 real gains whenever your marginal rate is below 30% — unless you receive a listed income-support payment (Age Pension, DSP, JobSeeker, Carer Payment and the other payments in s 119-15), in which case the floor is switched off and marginal rates apply. Note the exemption removes the floor only; nobody keeps the 50% discount on post-2027 growth except new-dwelling investors.

Q4 — Is the asset subject to a carve-out that already preserves favourable treatment?

Several asset types keep favourable treatment regardless of the 1 July 2027 date:

• Main residence — full exemption unchanged.
• Eligible new residential dwellings (first owner) — per-disposal choice between the 50% discount and indexation. This is the only asset class that keeps the discount, and there is no 15-year time limit in the final law. The proposed ministerial power to add more classes was removed in the Senate.
• Small business CGT concessions — 15-year exemption, 50% active asset reduction, retirement exemption, rollover all retained. The 50% active-asset reduction’s turnover threshold rises from $2m to $10m from 2027-28.
• Income-support recipients (Age Pension, DSP, JobSeeker and the rest of the statutory list) — exempt from the 30% minimum tax in years they realise a gain. They still lose the discount on post-2027 growth; the exemption removes the floor only.
• Complying super funds — excluded from the reform entirely; the 33 1/3% discount continues.

If your asset sits in any of these buckets, there is no benefit to accelerating just because of the CGT reform — the carve-out already shields you.

Q5 — Are transaction costs prohibitive relative to the tax saving?

Selling and re-establishing the same investment position isn’t free. For ASX shares you’ll pay 0.1–0.2% brokerage round-trip plus the bid-ask spread. For an ETF, similar. For an investment property, 5–7% of the sale price in agent commission, marketing, legal fees, plus stamp duty if you re-purchase — that’s $50,000+ on a $1 million sale, before you’ve even thought about tax.

If your modelled tax saving from accelerating is smaller than your transaction-cost cliff, the saving is illusory. The reform has to bite you by more than the friction cost just to break even.

Score yourself. A “yes” on Q1 plus a “yes” on Q3, with NO on Q4 and Q5, makes accelerating a candidate worth modelling. Anything less and the default answer is “hold.” Run a tie-breaker in the CGT Scenario Compare tool — it shows the full Bucket A vs Bucket B side-by-side under your actual numbers.

Timeline — the dates that decide which rules apply

The key practical point: 30 June 2027 is a contract-date line, not a settlement-date line, for shares, crypto, and most other CGT events — and thanks to the deemed sale, missing it is no longer costly. For most investors the real 2027 action item isn’t a sale at all: it’s the 1 July 2027 valuation file.

Heads up: The contract date controls CGT event A1 for shares and most asset types. For property the contract date also controls the CGT event, but settlement controls when cash actually arrives — which matters for your other financial planning. Either way, do not assume that a contract signed late June with settlement deep into July keeps you on the legacy side of the line. Get it in writing from your conveyancer or broker.

How time changes your tax bill — accelerated vs delayed sale

The whole “should I accelerate?” question reduces to one comparison: tax if you sell before 30 June 2027 (Bucket A) versus tax if you sell after (deemed-sale split), plus the timing of when the tax is paid. The deemed sale changes this comparison fundamentally: your accrued gain gets the same 50% discount either way — the only differences are the tax on FUTURE growth, the year the tax bill lands, and your marginal rate in that year.

Sensitivity 1 — Sell now vs one more year, by growth rate

Imagine a $200,000 nominal gain on a $500,000 asset (cost base $300,000) bought 1 July 2020. The taxpayer’s marginal rate is 39% (includes Medicare). Compare selling on 30 June 2027 (Bucket A) to selling 12 months later, 30 June 2028 (deemed-sale split, one year of new-rules growth), assuming 2.5% CPI:

The “extra tax” is entirely tax on the extra year’s growth — the original $200,000 gain is taxed identically ($39,000, just a year later) in both columns thanks to the deemed sale.

Plain English: waiting one extra year adds tax ONLY because you made more money. At 7% growth, the extra $35,000 of gain costs ~$8,800 in new-rules tax — you keep ~$26,000. Waiting wins whenever the asset keeps growing; the reform never claws back the gain you’d already made.

Sensitivity 2 — How much does accelerating actually save now?

Under the Budget-era time-apportioned commentary, accelerating a 2032-planned sale into 2027 looked like it saved tens of thousands, because holding “diluted” your discount share year by year. The final law deleted that effect. The deemed sale fixes your discounted legacy gain in dollars at the 1 July 2027 valuation — it does not shrink with time.

What accelerating still changes, on a $500,000 accrued gain at a 45% marginal rate:

Plain English: on already-accrued gains, accelerating saves approximately nothing and costs you the time value of the tax. The Budget-era “sell before the discount melts away” argument is dead — Parliament legislated the melt away.

Sensitivity 3 — The 30% minimum and low-MTR holders

For a self-funded retiree on a 16% effective marginal rate, the 30% floor applies to post-2027 real growth only — the accrued gain keeps its discount via the deemed sale:

Plain English: the floor is real for low-MTR holders, but it only ever taxes growth they haven’t earned yet — it cannot reach the $100k already banked. And if the holder receives the Age Pension or another listed income-support payment, the floor is switched off entirely (marginal rates apply to the indexed gain instead). The Budget-era picture of a retiree’s effective rate on the same gain ratcheting from 8% to 25% simply by waiting is not how the final law works.

Sensitivity 4 — When growth rate flips the answer

For very slow-growth assets (returns near or below CPI), the indexation half of the reform actually shelters more of your gain than the 50% discount used to. A 3.5%/year nominal asset held 8 years past 1 July 2027 has roughly half its gain absorbed by indexation — sometimes more than 50% discount would have done. Accelerating these assets to “lock in the discount” is exactly the wrong move; you’d be locking in a worse outcome.

The rule of thumb from Treasury’s modelling: real returns above ~5% per year produce more tax under the new rules; below ~2.5% produces less tax. Slow-grow regional property, bond ETFs, defensive infrastructure shares, low-yield rural land — these are the assets where the reform is net friendly, and accelerating is value-destroying.

Worked example 1 — Property investor: the deadline that stopped mattering

Steve owns an investment unit in Brisbane’s inner-north. He bought it for $500,000 in March 2017 with $25,000 of stamp duty and legal costs (cost base $525,000). It’s now valued at $850,000 in May 2026 — a paper gain of $325,000 after nine years. Steve’s marginal rate is 39% (includes Medicare). Importantly, he was already planning to sell in 2028 or 2029 to fund his daughter’s first-home deposit and pay down his own home loan.

He’s looking at two scenarios.

Option A — Accelerate, sell 30 June 2027

• Holding period at sale: 10 years 3 months. Bucket A.
• Estimated value at 30 Jun 2027 (continued 4% growth): $880,000.
• Cost base: $525,000.
• Nominal gain: $355,000.
• Discounted gain (50%): $177,500.
• Tax at 39%: $69,225 — payable in his 2026-27 return.

Option B — Stick to the original plan, sell 30 June 2029

• Holding period at sale: 12 years 3 months. Deemed-sale split applies.
• 1 July 2027 valuation: $880,000 (Steve books an appraisal at the changeover).
• Estimated value at 30 Jun 2029 (continued 4% growth): $920,000.
• Deferred legacy gain: $880,000 − $525,000 = $355,000. Discounted: $177,500. Tax at 39% = $69,225 — the same dollar figure as Option A, just payable two years later in his 2028-29 return.
• Post-2027 growth: reacquired cost base $880,000, indexed 2 years at 2.5%/yr (×1.051) = $924,900 — which exceeds the $920,000 sale price. Real reform gain: $0 (the unit’s 2.25%/yr growth ran below CPI, so indexation wiped it out entirely).
• Total tax: $69,225, deferred two years.
• Plus 2 extra years of rental income (net of expenses, say $8,000/yr after expenses) = +$16,000 in his pocket.
• Plus the time value of deferring a $69,225 tax bill by two years — worth roughly $7,000 at a 5% after-tax return.

The verdict

Under the final law, holding strictly dominates: identical CGT, paid later, plus $16,000 of rent, plus $40,000 of additional sale proceeds. The Budget-era version of this comparison showed accelerating saving ~$19,000 — an artifact of the time-apportioned split in the original proposal, which diluted the discount the longer you held. The legislated deemed sale removed that dilution.

Recommendation: stick to the original 2028-29 plan. Steve’s one genuine 2027 action item is the valuation: get a written appraisal (ideally a formal valuation) of the unit as at 1 July 2027 and file it with the property records. That document is what preserves his $69,225-not-more outcome. The only scenarios that would justify accelerating are non-tax ones — he’s done with being a landlord, or he expects his marginal rate to jump before 2029.

Worked example 2 — Share investor where accelerating is the wrong move

Naomi holds 1,000 CBA shares. She bought them in 2020 at $80 each — cost base $80,000 (plus negligible brokerage). They’re now worth $145 each as of May 2026 — paper value $145,000, paper gain $65,000. Naomi is a high-income GP on a 45% marginal rate. She has no plans to sell — these are part of her long-term retirement portfolio she intends to hold for another 15+ years.

She’s wondering whether she should panic-sell and re-buy to lock in the 50% discount.

Option A — Sell and re-buy on 30 June 2027

• Estimated value at 30 June 2027 (6%/yr growth from May 2026): ~$155,000. Gain: $75,000.
• Tax (Bucket A): $75,000 × 50% × 45% = $16,875.
• Plus brokerage round-trip (0.15% × $155,000 sell + 0.15% × $155,000 buy) ≈ $465.
• Plus bid-ask spread (assume 0.05% each way) ≈ $155.
• New cost base post-rebuy: $155,000.
• Cash burned now: $17,495 (tax + costs).

Option B — Hold the original parcel through to 2035 (planned 15-year hold)

• The deemed sale values her parcel at ~$155,000 on 1 July 2027 (the quoted CBA price — no valuer needed).
• Deferred legacy gain: $155,000 − $80,000 = $75,000. Discounted: $37,500. Tax at 45% = $16,875 — the identical figure to Option A, payable in 2035 instead of 2027.
• Assume 6%/yr nominal growth → value 2035 ≈ $247,000.
• Post-2027 growth: reacquired cost base $155,000, indexed 8 yrs at 2.5% (×1.218) = $188,800. Real gain: $247,000 − $188,800 = $58,200. Tax at 45% = $26,190.
• Total tax, all paid in 2035: $43,065. Zero friction.

Option C — Option A, then hold the re-bought parcel to 2035

• Tax paid in 2027: $16,875 + $620 costs = $17,495.
• After re-buy: cost base $155,000, held 8 years to 2035, wholly Bucket C. Value $247,000. Indexed cost base $188,800. Real gain $58,200. Tax at 45% = $26,190 — exactly the same reform-era tax as Option B.
• Total tax across both events: $16,875 + $26,190 = $43,065. Plus $620 friction. And the $16,875 was paid eight years early.

The verdict

Options B and C produce the same total tax to the dollar — the deemed sale already does everything the wash-sale was supposed to do. The round-trip buys Naomi literally nothing except $620 of friction and the loss of eight years’ compounding on $16,875 of prepaid tax (worth roughly $8,000–$10,000 at her likely after-tax return).

Recommendation: HOLD. This is the most common case across the share investor cohort and the one that got the wrong answer most often in social-media discussion during the Budget-proposal window. Under the Act as passed, “sell and re-buy to lock in the discount” is not merely value-destroying — it is completely pointless, because the Subdiv 112-E deemed sale locks in the discount on accrued gains automatically, for free, without triggering the tax. Anyone still recommending the round-trip is working from the superseded May 2026 proposal.

Worked example 3 — Crypto investor with concrete sale plans

Daniel holds 2 BTC, bought in March 2019 at $7,500/BTC (cost base $15,000 total, including small brokerage). At May 2026 the spot price is $185,000/BTC — paper value $370,000, paper gain $355,000. Daniel earns $145,000 salary, putting his marginal rate at 39%. He’s been planning for two years to liquidate one BTC to put a 20% deposit on a house, ideally in late 2027 or early 2028.

The reform announcement reframed his thinking. Should he accelerate the sale?

Option A — Accelerate, sell 1 BTC on 30 June 2027

• Assume BTC price flat at $185,000 (highly uncertain — crypto’s volatility makes any forward estimate suspect).
• Cost base for 1 BTC: $7,500.
• Nominal gain: $177,500.
• Bucket A — 50% discount.
• Discounted: $88,750. Tax at 39%: $34,613.
• Cash to deposit: $185,000 sale − $34,613 tax = $150,387 available.

Option B — Hold to 30 June 2028 (deemed-sale split)

• The deemed sale values his BTC at the 1 July 2027 spot price — on the flat assumption, $185,000/BTC.
• Deferred legacy gain: $185,000 − $7,500 = $177,500. Discounted: $88,750. Tax at 39% = $34,613 — identical to Option A, payable a year later.
• Post-2027 growth: reacquired cost base $185,000, indexed 1 year (×1.025) = $189,625 — above the flat $185,000 sale price. Real reform gain: $0.
• Total tax: $34,613. Cash to deposit: $150,387 — the same as Option A, with the tax paid later.

Option C — Hold to 30 June 2031 (longer post-reform period)

• Same deemed-sale split. On the flat-price assumption, the indexed cost base keeps climbing above the sale price, so the post-2027 real gain stays $0.
• Total tax: $34,613, deferred four years. Cash to deposit: $150,387.

The verdict

On a flat-price assumption, the tax outcome is identical across all three options — the deemed sale preserves the full discount on the $177,500 accrued gain no matter when Daniel sells, and indexation means a flat price generates no new taxable gain. The Budget-era analysis showed waiting costing $3,500–$9,100; the legislated transition deleted that penalty.

What actually matters for Daniel is BTC price risk, in both directions. If BTC rises after 1 July 2027, the rise is real gain taxed under the new rules (39% marginal for him) — a materially worse rate than the old effective 19.5% on discounted gains, but that’s unavoidable however he times things: the old rules simply no longer exist for future growth. If BTC falls, waiting cost him deposit, not tax.

Recommendation: sell when the house purchase needs the money — the reform no longer penalises waiting on the accrued gain. The one genuine tax-date on his calendar is 1 July 2027 itself: record the AUD spot price of BTC that day (any reputable price source), because it fixes his deferred discounted gain. Crypto investors with no concrete sale plans should NOT sell for tax reasons — the volatility of the asset dwarfs the reform impact.

The asset-specific complications (multiple parcels, FIFO/specific-identification matching, staking-reward cost-base proliferation) are covered in detail in the CGT Reform for Crypto companion article.

Worked example 4 — Small business owner who must NOT accelerate

Mei owns and operates a metal fabrication workshop in Geelong, trading through her own company. She also owns the commercial premises in her own name (cost base $420,000, current value $1,250,000, owned since 2010). She’s 52 and plans to retire and sell the business — including the premises — at age 60. Her marginal rate during operating years is 45%.

Reading the CGT reform news, Mei is tempted to sell the premises early to lock in the 50% discount. This would be the most expensive mistake she could make.

Why? Small business CGT concessions wipe most of the tax — IF she waits

The 15-year exemption under Subdivision 152-B applies when:

• The asset has been continuously owned for ≥15 years (Mei meets this from 2025 onwards),
• The taxpayer is ≥55 years old at the time of disposal,
• The disposal is in connection with retirement, AND
• The taxpayer satisfies the basic conditions (small business entity or $6M maximum net asset value test, active asset test, etc.).

At age 60 and 25 years’ ownership, Mei almost certainly meets all four. Under the 15-year exemption the entire capital gain is exempt from CGT — it doesn’t even flow into assessable income.

Comparison — accelerate vs hold to 60

Option A — Sell now (May 2026), age 52, no 15-year exemption (under 55):

• Cost base $420,000. Sale price (current value) $1,250,000. Nominal gain $830,000.
• Cannot access 15-year exemption (age < 55, not retiring).
• Could access 50% active asset reduction + small business retirement exemption ($500k lifetime cap):
• After 50% active asset reduction: $415,000 taxable.
• Retirement exemption: $500,000 lifetime cap… but only if she contributes to super (she’s <55) or holds in a deemed retirement-exemption arrangement. Complex, partial saving.
• After 50% CGT discount on remaining: $207,500 taxable.
• Approximate tax at 45%: ~$93,375 (plus complications).

Option B — Sell at age 60 (2034), with full 15-year exemption:

• Entire $830,000-plus gain is exempt under Subdivision 152-B.
• Tax: $0.

The verdict

Accelerating costs Mei roughly $90,000 in unnecessary tax, plus probably more once you account for the retirement-funding implications.

Recommendation: DO NOT ACCELERATE. The small business 15-year exemption is the single most generous CGT concession in Australian tax law, and the reform as legislated explicitly preserves it (along with the 50% active asset reduction, the retirement exemption, and rollover relief). The Senate even sweetened the package: the 50% active-asset reduction’s turnover threshold rises from $2m to $10m aggregated turnover from 2027-28, widening access for mid-sized operators — though the 15-year exemption, retirement exemption and rollover keep their $2m turnover / $6m net-asset tests. Anyone within a few years of age 55 with a qualifying active asset should wait for the 15-year window, full stop. The CGT reform is irrelevant to your tax outcome.

The detailed mechanics — basic conditions, active asset test, $6M MNAV test, $500k retirement exemption interaction — are covered in Small Business CGT Concessions After 2027. The takeaway here is unchanged: never accelerate when a Subdivision 152-B exemption is on the horizon.

Five archetypes — when accelerating helps vs hurts

Putting the four worked examples into a broader taxonomy, five investor profiles cover most of the practical decision space:

1. Property investor planning a sale in 1–2 years anyway — sell on your own schedule. Steve’s case. Under the final law the 30 June 2027 date is no longer worth rushing for: the deemed sale preserves the discount on his accrued gain, and holding adds rent and defers the tax bill. Sell when the market and your life say sell; just have the 1 July 2027 valuation on file.

2. Long-term ASX share or ETF holder — HOLD. Naomi’s case, and now the easiest call in the cohort. The deemed sale already banks the discount on accrued gains for free — a tax-motivated round-trip achieves nothing except friction and prepaid tax.

3. High-gain crypto with imminent sale plans — sell when you need the money. Daniel’s case. The accrued gain keeps its discount whenever he sells; a flat or falling price generates no new tax. The reform stops rewarding the calendar and starts rewarding record-keeping: capture the 1 July 2027 spot price for every parcel.

4. Small business owner near the 15-year retirement exemption — HOLD. Mei’s case. The 15-year exemption is preserved (and the 50% active-asset reduction’s turnover threshold rises to $10m from 2027-28). Anyone within 5 years of age 55 with a qualifying active asset gets to zero CGT on the lot — there is no possible scenario where accelerating beats that. Same applies to spouses entering retirement together where the asset is owned jointly.

5. Retiree on low MTR with significant unrealised gains — mostly relax; MTR timing is the residual question. The Budget-era commentary made this the cleanest accelerate case; the final law defused it twice over. First, the deemed sale means the accrued gain keeps its 8%-effective discounted treatment whenever it’s realised — the 30% floor can only touch post-2027 growth. Second, retirees on the Age Pension (or any listed income-support payment) are exempt from the floor entirely under s 119-15, paying marginal rates on the indexed gain instead. What remains is ordinary marginal-rate timing: a big deferred gain realised in one year still stacks brackets, so spreading disposals across years — the strategy retirees already used — still works.

Heads up: Where a sale IS on the cards, transaction costs and opportunity cost still shape the timing. Run your specific numbers through the CGT Scenario Compare before pulling the trigger on a sale that wasn’t already planned.

Settlement-date and contract-date traps

First, the reassurance: because of the deemed sale, landing on the “wrong” side of 30 June 2027 no longer costs you the discount on accrued gains. These mechanics matter mainly if you’ve decided, for MTR-timing or simplicity reasons, that you want a disposal wholly inside 2026-27.

The 30 June 2027 line is a contract date, not a settlement date, for shares, crypto, ETFs, and most CGT events. CGT event A1 triggers on the contract date — that’s when ownership passes for tax purposes.

For property the same rule technically applies (CGT event A1 = contract date), but settlement timing matters separately for cash flow and for some apportionment edge cases. Practically:

• Shares, ETFs, crypto — your trade execution date is your contract date. A trade executed 30 June 2027 sits in Bucket A even if settlement (T+2 for ASX shares) falls in July. A trade executed 1 July 2027 is in Bucket B even if you placed the order on 30 June.
• Property — contract signing date is the CGT event. A property contracted on 28 June 2027 with settlement on 15 July 2027 is in Bucket A. BUT — the ATO has flagged that “sham” contracts back-dated to fall before 30 June 2027 will be challenged. The contract must be genuinely formed by 30 June 2027, with normal arms-length terms, deposits paid, and so on.
• Crypto on overseas exchanges — exchange timezone matters. A trade you execute in Sydney at 11:30pm on 30 June 2027 may show as 1 July 2027 on a US-based exchange’s ledger. The ATO accepts your local timezone for trades you initiated, but get screenshots and document carefully.

Practical advice: if you’re cutting it fine on a major asset sale, get the contract executed at least 1–2 weeks before 30 June 2027 to allow for normal commercial back-and-forth and to avoid disputes about “the contract was conditional and didn’t really form until July.” Solicitors, conveyancers, and brokers will be flat-out the second half of June 2027 — book early.

Transaction cost cliff — the saving has to clear this hurdle

Selling and re-buying an asset to “reset” your cost base under Bucket B (or to lock in the discount in Bucket A and then re-purchase) isn’t free. Approximate friction costs by asset class:

Rule of thumb: if your modelled CGT saving from accelerating is less than 1.5× your friction cost, the saving is illusory once you account for execution risk and timing uncertainty. For property especially, the 5–8% friction means any tax-motivated sale-and-rebuy round-trip is mathematically a loser unless your tax saving exceeds about 8% of the asset value. That essentially never happens.

The corollary: if you’re going to sell-and-rebuy, the sale half is much more defensible than the rebuy half. If you’re crystallising the gain because you wanted to exit anyway, the friction is justified; if you’re crystallising AND re-establishing the same exposure, you’ve paid 5%+ for nothing.

Marginal rate timing — your MTR in 2026–27 vs 2027–28

The CGT discount applies after you’ve added the gain to your other taxable income. So the marginal rate the gain hits at is a function of your other income in the year of disposal. If your other income is variable, the year you sell can change your effective rate materially.

Scenarios where MTR timing matters:

• Promotion incoming. If you’ll be on $180,000+ from July 2027 (top bracket) versus $135,000 in 2026–27 (37% bracket), accelerating into 2026–27 saves 8 percentage points × discounted gain. On a $200k gain, that’s ~$8,000.
• Spouse returning to work. Family income spike in 2027–28 may push you (or your spouse, if jointly held) into the next bracket. Sell in 2026–27 before that happens.
• Career break / parental leave. If you’ll be on $40,000 in 2027–28 (low MTR) but $130,000 in 2026–27 (37% bracket), HOLD. The post-reform discount disappears, but your MTR drop more than compensates.
• Retirement transition. Often misread. The temptation is “sell in 2027 before reform”; the right move for many is to spread sales across the retirement transition (e.g. one parcel in each of 2026–27, 2027–28, 2028–29) to manage MTR and crystallise some legacy + some reform-portion gains under each year’s tax position. Use the CGT Scenario Compare to model multi-year sale strategies.

The 30% minimum interaction matters specifically when your post-reform MTR is below 30%. For a retiree dropping to a 16% effective MTR in 2028 onwards, the 30% floor adds 14 percentage points to the reform-portion tax — large enough that accelerating to the legacy 50% discount in 2026–27 (taxed at 16% × 50% = 8%) easily beats waiting. This is the cleanest accelerate case.

Capital loss harvesting — what’s actually MORE valuable under the new rules

A surprising consequence of the reform: capital loss carry-forwards become MORE valuable, not less.

Here’s why. Under the old rules, a $50,000 capital loss offset a $50,000 gain dollar-for-dollar at the nominal level, before the 50% discount. Net effect: $25,000 less discounted gain × marginal rate. Worth $11,250 at 45% MTR.

Under the new rules, capital losses still offset nominal gain before discount/indexation, but the reform portion is taxed at the greater of MTR or 30%. So the same $50,000 loss saves $50,000 × 30% = $15,000 on a reform-bucket gain (more if the holder is at 45% MTR). The minimum-tax floor effectively raises the marginal value of every dollar of carried-forward loss.

Practical play in 2026–27: if you have unrealised capital losses on under-performing investments, this is the year to crystallise them. The losses carry forward indefinitely under the existing rules (no time limit on capital loss carry-forwards), and they retain their value in pre-reform and post-reform years. They DON’T expire at 30 June 2027.

Use the CGT Harvest Calculator to rank loss-harvest candidates across your portfolio. Anti-wash-sale provisions (Part IVA) still apply — you can’t sell a loss-making stock and re-buy the same stock within 30 days expecting the loss to stick. Substitute exposure (different ticker, different ETF, different asset class) is fine.

Anti-avoidance — don’t try to game the date

The 1 July 2027 boundary will attract integrity scrutiny. Examples of behaviour likely to be challenged:

• Back-dated contracts. Signing a contract in July 2027 with a 30 June 2027 date on it. This is straightforward fraud and would attract penalty tax + interest, not just a recharacterisation.
• Sham wash-sales. Selling an asset to a related party (your own SMSF, your spouse, your family trust) at a non-arm’s-length price on or around 30 June 2027 to crystallise a gain without genuinely exiting the position. Part IVA general anti-avoidance applies.
• Coordinated portfolio churn. Selling everything you hold on 30 June 2027 and re-buying the same portfolio on 1 July 2027. Under the final law this is pointless as well as risky — the deemed sale already resets cost bases and preserves the discount without a transaction — but anyone who does it anyway invites the dominant-purpose test on top of the wasted friction.
• Bracket-shopping via trust distributions. Distributing a 2026–27 capital gain disproportionately to a low-income beneficiary to capture sub-30% effective rates, where the beneficiary wouldn’t have otherwise received income.

What’s NOT a problem:

• Genuine arms-length sales to unrelated third parties at market price, regardless of the date.
• Loss harvesting (crystallising capital losses) using legitimate substitute exposure after the 30-day wash-sale window.
• Bringing forward an already-planned sale (Steve’s case) — this is the policy working as intended.
• Choosing between the 50% discount and indexation per disposal on an eligible new residential dwelling — the choice is written into the Act.

Rule of thumb: if your motivation for the sale would survive cross-examination by an ATO investigator — “I was always going to sell within X years anyway and the reform brought it forward by Y months” — you’re fine. If the only reason for the transaction is tax, and there’s no genuine commercial substance, you’re at risk.

Decision summary table

The framework collapses to a simple question: is your marginal rate unusually low right now, and was this sale coming anyway? If yes to both, selling in 2026-27 can win on rate timing. Everything else: hold, and keep valuation evidence at 1 July 2027.

Actions for the next 12 months

For everyone, regardless of which way the framework pointed:

1. Plan the 1 July 2027 valuation file. This is the single highest-value action the final law created. For property, book a formal valuation (or at minimum a written agent appraisal plus comparable-sales evidence) as at 1 July 2027. For listed shares, ETFs and crypto, the quoted/spot price does the job — capture a record. That figure fixes your deemed-sale split and protects your discounted accrued gain forever.
2. Crystallise capital losses in 2026–27. Loss harvesting is a free option — the losses carry forward indefinitely and retain full offset value under the new rules.
3. Document your decision rationale for any sale near the boundary. A contemporaneous note (“the sale was already planned; here’s the math”) protects you in any future ATO review.

If you’ve concluded “consider selling in 2026-27” (low-MTR window or already-planned sale):

1. Run the numbers in the CGT Scenario Compare tool with realistic assumptions for growth, marginal rate, and disposal date. Model multiple scenarios (sell now vs hold 2 yrs vs hold 5 yrs).
2. Confirm any small-business CGT-concession eligibility with your tax agent first. The 15-year, 50% active asset, retirement, and rollover concessions are all preserved — and the 50% active-asset reduction opens up to $10m-turnover businesses from 2027-28.
3. Book your conveyancer / broker with normal lead time. With the deemed sale removing the cliff, there’s no reason to expect a June 2027 stampede — but contracts still take time.

If you’ve concluded “hold”:

1. Stop worrying about it. The single biggest mistake investors make in policy-transition windows is letting the tax tail wag the investment dog — and the final law specifically protects holders.
2. Use 2026–27 to harvest capital losses as above. This is the year to clean up under-performers.
3. Re-run your portfolio plan with the new rules in mind for long-term scenarios — the reform doesn’t change much for slow-grow defensive assets, but high-growth equity and crypto positions have materially different exit math on future growth now.
4. Watch the new-dwelling carve-out if you’re a property investor considering future purchases — new residential dwellings retain the 50% discount under a per-disposal choice (no time limit in the final law), which materially shifts the new-vs-existing comparison.

Sources

• Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 (Act No. 49 of 2026) — incl. the Subdiv 112-E deemed-sale transition (market valuation at 1 July 2027, or apportioning-method election under ss 112-155(3)/112-165(3)), new Div 119 minimum tax and s 119-15 income-support exemption — and Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 (Act No. 50 of 2026). Passed 25 June 2026; royal assent 26 June 2026.
• Parliament of Australia — bill homepage and Senate amendments (Government sheet AU131; Greens sheet 3886): aph.gov.au.
• ATO transitional guidance on contract-vs-settlement timing and integrity rules (forthcoming PCG, expected before 1 July 2027).
• Master article: 50% CGT Discount Reform: Cost Base Indexation + 30% Minimum Tax from 1 July 2027.

Asset-class deep dives

The accelerate-or-hold decision plays out differently by asset class. Five companion articles walk through the worked examples and asset-specific complications:

• CGT Reform for Property Investors — investment property, main-residence carve-out, new-dwelling discount choice, depreciation cost-base interactions.
• CGT Reform for ASX Share Investors — parcel methods, DRP cost-base proliferation, ESS shares, off-market buybacks.
• CGT Reform for ETFs and Managed Funds — AMIT cost-base adjustments, distributed capital gains, foreign-domiciled vs ASX-domiciled ETF treatment.
• CGT Reform for Crypto — Bitcoin/ETH/altcoin parcel matching, hard forks, staking rewards, stablecoin churn.
• Small Business CGT Concessions After 2027 — what’s retained: 15-year exemption, 50% active asset reduction, retirement exemption, rollover relief.

Related reading

• Negative Gearing Reform Budget 2026: What Changed by Purchase Date — paired property reform.
• 50% CGT Discount Under Review: Senate Inquiry Update — pre-Budget context and confirmed outcome.
• Budget 2026 Explained: Winners and Losers — full Budget breakdown.
• How Budget 2026 Changes Your EOFY Plan — combined EOFY 2026 and 2027 implications.