Noel Whittaker's September newsletter comes back to a flaw in the new capital gains tax rules — and this time he gives it a name.
The change sounds technical. From 1 July 2027, a deemed capital gains tax (CGT) event locks in the gains built up on affected assets to that date, and the tax on those gains is deferred until a "realisation event" happens. Most of us would assume a realisation event means selling something.
As drafted, it doesn't have to. The definition is broad enough to catch death. Noel Whittaker's point is that when you die, ownership of your assets passes to your estate — and that transfer is itself treated as the realisation event. The pre-July 2027 gain, which would normally travel on to your beneficiaries untaxed until they chose to sell, becomes taxable at that moment.
He calls it a widow's tax because of who is usually standing there when the bill arrives. Think of a couple in their fifties with an investment property bought in the 1990s, or a share portfolio built up over thirty years. The unrealised gain can be enormous. If one of them dies, the survivor can be handed a tax bill on a gain nobody has turned into cash, on an asset they still own and may badly want to keep.
"You don't have to sell the asset. You don't have to receive any money. Someone simply has to die."
He notes the Government released draft amendments on 4 August 2026 that did not fix this particular problem. Nothing here is settled law yet, and there is no action to rush into. But it is a good reason to know what is sitting in your portfolio, what you paid for it, and what would happen to it if one of you died — questions worth answering calmly now rather than in a hurry later.
Read the full article: NOEL NEWS September 2026 — "The widow's tax" — Noel Whittaker, Noel News, September 2026.
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