🚨 Tax specialists have uncovered a sleeper clause in the federal budget bill designed to quietly inflate investor tax bills — and it's a rort. The bill which passed the lower house yesterday, introduces a mandatory "loss-ordering" mechanism for the first time in Australian tax history. Instead of cherry-picking how losses offset gains, investors will now be forced to burn through their oldest gains first — stripping away the 50% CGT discount and leaving newer gains fully exposed to the punishing new cost-base indexation regime from July 1, 2027.
Say you bought shares in 2018 and again in 2024. You sell both at a gain, but you also have losses to offset. Previously, you'd apply those losses to your 2018 gains first — which already qualify for the 50% CGT discount, meaning less of them are taxable anyway. Under the new rules, you're forced to do exactly that — exhausting the discounted gains first and leaving your 2024 gains fully exposed to the new, harsher indexation rules.
You end up paying more. This isn't an oversight. It's a deliberate revenue grab buried in fine print