There is a strategy that has been quietly available to almost every Australian selling a large asset.
Time the sale into a year when your other income is low. Claim the 50% CGT discount. Make a personal deductible superannuation contribution to push the remaining gain down through the brackets. A gain that would have been taxed at 47% ends up taxed at considerably less, and part of it lands in super at 15%.
From 1 July 2027, the arithmetic underneath that changes.
The two changes
Both were introduced in the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 on 28 May 2026, with the core provisions passed in June.
A minimum 30% tax rate on real capital gains. From 1 July 2027, a capital gain accruing to an individual, partnership or trust on an asset held twelve months or more is taxed at no less than 30%. Recipients of the Age Pension and JobSeeker are exempt.
The 50% discount is replaced by indexation. For individuals, trusts and partnerships, the discount gives way to a discount based on inflation. Gains that accrued up to 1 July 2027 keep the 50% treatment; what changes is the treatment of gains accruing after it.
Two exceptions survive. New builds may choose between the 50% discount and the inflation arrangements. Affordable housing keeps a discount of up to 60%. The small business CGT concessions are preserved.
Why the contribution strategy is affected
The deductible contribution worked because it reduced taxable income, and the tax on the gain followed taxable income down through the marginal rates. The lever was the marginal rate.
A minimum rate is not a marginal rate. If the gain is taxed at no less than 30% regardless of what the rest of your income does, then reducing the rest of your income no longer reduces the tax on the gain in the same way. The contribution still does other useful things — it puts money into a 15% environment, it may still reduce tax on your ordinary income — but its effect on the gain itself is not what it was.
This is the part worth sitting with. The strategy is not dead. Its purpose changes: from reducing the tax on the sale to what else the money should be doing, which is a different conversation and often reaches a different answer.
What indexation actually does
Replacing a 50% discount with an inflation-based one is not a uniform tightening. It depends on how long you held the asset and what inflation did while you held it.
A long hold through a high-inflation stretch can fare reasonably under indexation, because more of the nominal gain is treated as inflation rather than as real gain. A short hold in a low-inflation period, where most of the gain is real, fares worse than it did under a flat 50% discount.
Which means the two changes pull in different directions for different assets, and a general rule about who is better or worse off will be wrong about half the time. It has to be worked out for the actual asset.
Timing, and its limits
The obvious response is to bring a sale forward before 1 July 2027. Sometimes that is right. Three cautions.
The gain is split, not switched. The measures apply to gains accruing from 1 July 2027. A gain built up over fifteen years and realised in 2028 is not entirely on the new basis.
A sale driven by a tax date is still a sale. Selling a good asset a year early to preserve a discount can cost more than the discount was worth, in transaction costs, in what you buy next, and in what the asset would have done.
Contribution caps have not moved to accommodate this. The concessional cap and any carry-forward you have are what they are; a bigger contribution is not always available to be made.
What we would look at with you
Whether a planned sale sits before or after 1 July 2027, and what actually changes if it moves. What the gain looks like under indexation rather than under a 50% discount, for that asset and that holding period. Whether a deductible contribution still earns its place once its effect on the gain is smaller. And whether any of it changes the decision to sell at all.
Rules stated here are current as at September 2026, drawn from the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 introduced on 28 May 2026 with core provisions passed in June 2026, and Treasury's Budget 2026-27 materials. Further tranches of legislation dealing with trusts, estates and part-year residency remain in consultation. General information only — confirm the current position, and your own contribution caps, before acting.