Australia · Property & shares
Estimate CGT on a property or share sale, including the 50% discount and your actual marginal tax rate.
CGT estimate
Enter a sale price and cost base to see your estimate.
Capital gain = sale price (or market value, if gifted or sold below market) minus cost base. If you've held the asset over 12 months and aren't a company, the 50% CGT discount is applied to the gain. The resulting net capital gain is then added to your other taxable income for the year, and this calculator works out the extra tax that gain triggers by comparing tax on your income with the gain included, against tax on your income without it — the actual marginal-rate method the ATO uses, not a flat estimate.
Your cost base isn't just the purchase price. It includes incidental costs of acquiring the asset (stamp duty, legal and conveyancing fees, buyer's agent fees), costs of holding it that you didn't already claim as a tax deduction, capital improvement costs (a renovation, not routine repairs), and incidental costs of disposal (agent commission, marketing, legal fees on sale). Under-stating your cost base is one of the most common CGT mistakes — go back through your records rather than relying on memory for a property you've held a long time.
Australian resident individuals and trusts get a 50% discount on the gain, provided the asset was held for at least 12 months. Companies get no discount at all — company-held investment property or shares are taxed on the full gain. Superannuation funds get a 33.33% discount instead of 50%. If you're unsure which category applies to your situation (for example, an asset held via a trust with corporate beneficiaries), that's worth confirming with a tax agent before relying on this calculator's individual/trust assumption.
If a property was genuinely your main residence for your entire ownership period, and never used to produce income, it's generally fully CGT-exempt — this calculator's main residence toggle models exactly that case, reducing CGT to zero. Real life is often messier: renting out a room, running a home business, moving out and renting the property elsewhere while claiming the 6-year absence rule, or living elsewhere before moving in. Any of these can trigger a partial exemption calculated on a time or floor-area basis, which is genuinely a separate, harder calculation this tool doesn't attempt — see the ATO's eligibility for main residence exemption guidance, and treat "yes" here as "unambiguously yes, the whole time," getting advice for anything less clean.
There's no separate CGT rate in Australia — your net capital gain is simply added to your other taxable income and taxed at ordinary marginal rates, using the same 2026-27 brackets as the Income Tax Calculator. A $50,000 net capital gain taxed on top of $40,000 of other income sits mostly in the 30% bracket; the same gain on top of $180,000 of other income sits mostly in the 37% and 45% brackets. Timing a sale to a lower-income year (or splitting ownership between spouses) is a common, legitimate way investors manage this, though it's a planning decision, not something this calculator does for you.
Shares bought for $20,000 (including brokerage) and sold three years later for $35,000 (after brokerage on sale) give a capital gain of $15,000. Held over 12 months, the 50% discount applies: net capital gain is $7,500. Added to other taxable income of $95,000, the gain pushes total taxable income to $102,500 — all of it still within the 30% bracket, so the extra tax is roughly $7,500 × 32% (30% plus 2% Medicare levy) ≈ $2,400. Without the discount, the same $15,000 gain would have added roughly $4,800 in tax — the discount essentially halves the tax cost for anything held over a year.
If you sold another asset at a loss in the same year, that loss is offset against your capital gains before the 50% discount is applied, which usually gives a better outcome than offsetting after the discount. If your total losses for the year exceed your total gains, the unused balance isn't wasted — it carries forward to offset gains in any future year, with no expiry, until fully used. There's no equivalent ability to offset a capital loss against ordinary income like salary or business profit, which is a common point of confusion.
CGT is the "sell" side of property investing. See the Stamp Duty Calculator for the "buy" side and the Land Tax Calculator for the ongoing "hold" cost — together they cover the full lifecycle.