Blog

A capital gains tax before the end of this Government’s term is starting to look like a real possibility. The current indication from the Tax Working Group is for the entire profit from a capital gain, such as the sale of a farm, business, shares in a company, rental property et cetera to be treated as income and added into your tax return. This would seem particularly harsh when compared with the Australian system which takes half of the profit and puts it in your tax return.

Gains are likely to be measured from a date such as the date when the law becomes operative. This would mean assets are going to need to be valued as at that date.

You can take some comfort that this is only a preliminary report and it is likely there will be a number of changes before the proposed law is finalised.