The CGT discount dies in 2027. Your SMSF keeps its one-third. Here is the split

The biggest capital gains change since 1999 passed Parliament on 25 June and starts on 1 July 2027. The 50 percent CGT discount for individuals, trusts and partnerships is being replaced with CPI cost-base indexation plus a 30 percent minimum tax on net capital gains. Most of the coverage is written for property investors, and almost all of it buries the sentence that matters most to an SMSF trustee.

Superannuation funds are excluded. Your fund's one-third CGT discount on assets held longer than twelve months is unchanged, and the new minimum tax does not apply to complying funds.

That single exclusion splits the Australian tax landscape into two regimes from 1 July 2027, and the split itself is the thing worth understanding.

What changes outside super

From 1 July 2027, an individual selling a long-held asset no longer halves the gain. Instead the cost base is indexed by CPI, which removes the inflation component, and the remaining real gain is taxed at the person's marginal rate with a floor: a 30 percent minimum on net capital gains, applying even where the marginal rate would produce less.

The transition is date-based, not asset-based. Gains accrued before 1 July 2027 keep the 50 percent discount treatment; growth after that date falls under indexation and the minimum tax. Holding an asset since 2010 does not grandfather it. The clock splits at the date, which means valuations around 30 June 2027 are going to matter for a very large number of people, the same way 30 June 2026 valuations now matter for Division 296.

What does not change inside super

A complying fund keeps the arrangement it has had all along: one-third discount on gains from assets held longer than twelve months, which takes the 15 percent accumulation rate to an effective 10 percent on those gains, and zero on assets supporting retirement-phase pensions within the caps. No indexation switch, no minimum tax, no new election, no new record-keeping.

For once, an SMSF trustee reads a tax-reform headline and the action list is empty.

The arithmetic of the split

It is worth seeing the gap plainly. Take a $100,000 real gain on a long-held asset from July 2027.

Outside super, for someone on the top marginal rate, the old system taxed half the nominal gain at 47 percent. The new system taxes the real gain at no less than 30 percent, and for top-rate taxpayers the effective burden on long-held assets generally rises.

Inside an accumulation-phase fund, the same gain is taxed at an effective 10 percent, exactly as it was last year and the year before.

The gap between the two regimes was already material. From July 2027 it widens, and where assets sit relative to that gap becomes a bigger number in more households' arithmetic. What anyone does about that is a question for a licensed adviser, because contribution caps, preservation rules and Division 296 all pull on the same decision. The caps themselves are tracked figures: $32,500 concessional and $130,000 non-concessional this year, with bring-forward tiers hanging off the $2.1 million transfer balance cap.

What a trustee actually has to do

Nothing, inside the fund. The one-third discount is not an election, not a form, and not a date to diarise. Fund CGT records continue exactly as before.

The indirect work is the realistic kind: if you also hold assets personally or through a family trust, the pre-2027 window is about to generate a wave of restructuring conversations, and those conversations touch contribution caps and Division 296 thresholds the moment super enters them. The numbers that matter in those conversations are the ones a fund should already be tracking through the year rather than reconstructing in June.

SMSF Core tracks the fund side of that arithmetic: per-parcel CGT records with the 45-day franking status, contribution caps per member, and member balances against the Division 296 thresholds, with the source cited on every figure. The sample fund at app.smsfcore.com/demo shows the per-parcel CGT view with data already in it, including the disposal scenario check in the pre-trade simulator.

SMSF Core is an information tool, not a licensed financial service. Restructuring decisions involve personal circumstances this article cannot see. Talk to a licensed adviser or your accountant.