From the archive: a case study from Noel's June 2026 newsletter that still answers one of the questions we hear most often.
If you own an investment property or a parcel of shares that has done well, there's a particular worry that usually arrives before the sale does: how much of the gain will go to the Tax Office? Noel Whittaker's June newsletter works through capital gains tax (CGT) in plain terms, then shows a strategy that surprises a lot of people.
The starting point is that CGT is not a separate tax with its own rate. The taxable gain is simply added to your income in the year you sign the sale contract — the contract date, not the settlement date. Hold the asset for at least a year and a day and only half the gain counts. Everything after that depends on what else you earned that year.
Which is where the lever sits. Two things bring the bill down: timing the sale for a low-income year, such as the year after you stop working, and making tax-deductible contributions to super — including catch-up contributions, if your total super balance was under $500,000 at the previous 30 June.
The case study makes it concrete. Jack and Jill, in their early 70s, sell an investment property bought for $500,000 for around $1.2 million. After the 50% discount, each has a taxable gain of roughly $175,000. Each then makes a deductible super contribution of a similar size.
Their taxable income drops to zero and the CGT liability effectively disappears.
The detail matters, and Noel is careful about it: the work test applies to contributions between ages 67 and 75, and the deduction has to be sized so taxable income doesn't drop below the $18,200 tax-free threshold. If you're in your 50s and still working, the same principle applies with fewer hoops — but the caps are the thing to understand before you sign anything, not after.
Read the full article: Capital Gains Tax (and the Jack and Jill case study) — Noel Whittaker, Noel News, June 2026.
Catch-up contributions, the work test, contribution caps — the rules shift most years, and getting them wrong is expensive. Super Made Simple (7th Edition) sets all of it out in Noel Whittaker's plain-English style, updated for the current financial year. $16.95, buy direct from the author, PDF and EPUB included.