The New CGT Law Tells You to Wait. Here's What Quietly Expires While You Do.

Buried in the capital gains legislation that passed in June is a sentence that tells taxpayers, in the Act’s own words, that they “can wait”. It is correct. Nothing is payable on 1 July 2027, nothing must be lodged, and the choice that matters does not have to be made until the year you sell — which for most people is a decade or more away.

That is also the trap, and it is not the one being discussed. The question everyone is asking is whether Australia’s roughly 5,200 valuers can get through the work in time. Wrong question. Nothing expires on 1 July 2027 except the ability to prove what your property was worth that day — and by the time the law asks you, the answer will have to be reconstructed rather than recorded.

Now the disclosure, because it matters: we sell valuations. A valuation firm arguing that valuations will be scarce and expensive is exactly what you should read sceptically. So this piece shows its arithmetic, names what it cannot calculate, publishes the reading that contradicts ours, and does not forecast a price. Check the working.

What the Act actually does

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 received assent on 26 June 2026. Schedule 1 inserts Subdivision 112-E into the ITAA 1997, headed “Deemed sales just before, and reacquisitions on, 1 July 2027”: affected assets are treated as sold immediately before that date and reacquired on it.

Section 112-155(3) sets what they are treated as sold for — capital proceeds equal “the asset’s market value just before 1 July 2027” — unless you choose an apportioning method under section 112-185. And section 112-185 reads: “The Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine a method for apportioning capital gains and capital losses…”

May, not must. No statutory deadline. And as at 4 August 2026, no such instrument has been registered. The Federal Register’s list of instruments authorised by the Act returns zero results, and CPA Australia’s June submission listed the Bill’s nine ministerial instrument powers and noted that “none has been released”. The Parliamentary Library’s Bills Digest summarises submitters in the same terms: “Absent clarity, taxpayers may need to rely on market valuations, increasing compliance costs.”

So as things stand there is one mechanism available, and it is a market value at a date that will pass.

That position is contingent, and the contingency runs against this article rather than for it. CPA Australia’s submission is explicit that “residential property is amenable to time-apportionment” and that a well-designed instrument “could materially reduce the transitional valuation burden — particularly for residential property”. Residential is the segment our arithmetic is built on and the one an instrument would most plausibly relieve. If it is made, most of what follows shrinks.

The timing asymmetry, which is the whole problem

Here is the sentence. Note 2 to section 112-155(2):

“Any capital gain or loss you make from the sale on 30 June 2027 is disregarded (and deferred) until the income year in which the realisation event happens. You can wait until then before working out the amount of the capital gain or loss…”

Note 2 to section 112-155(4) puts the method choice on the same timetable: “you do not have to make a choice until the day you lodge your income tax return for the income year in which the realisation event happens”.

So the decision waits until you sell. The evidence it will rest on is a market value at 30 June 2027, a date that arrives once.

That asymmetry explains behaviour usually put down to ignorance. People will leave it late because the deadline they can see is the one at sale — and on that deadline they are right. Your position under the Act does change on 1 July 2027: the asset is deemed sold and reacquired, and a pre-1985 asset stops being one. But nothing is required of you. The only thing that expires is the ease of proving what it was worth.

So the queue is not in 2027. It forms after it.

The arithmetic, and what it cannot tell you

The two numbers people want — the workforce and the exposed population — both exist.

About 5,200 people work as valuers in Australia — ANZSCO 224512, on main-job basis, from the 2021 Census. A larger figure of 13,800 is also published, for the broader four-digit group “Land Economists and Valuers”, from a different collection (the labour force survey, February 2025) that the agency warns does not sum with the narrower one. We use 5,200 because it is the occupation-specific count, but the choice moves any ratio by a factor of 2.7, and the narrower figure is also the older one. Both are given here so you can substitute.

About 2,335,540 individuals reported an interest in a rental property in 2023-24, across 3,403,238 property interests. That second number is not a count of properties: the tax office states that its data “is at the rental property schedule level, and is not representative of the total number of properties… The same property can have more than one individual with a” schedule. Co-owned properties are counted once per owner.

And the annual flow of events that actually trigger the question: 212,960 individuals reported a capital gain on Australian real estate in 2023-24, on $37.63 billion of gains. The twelve-year series runs from 96,005 in 2012-13 to a peak of 265,326 in 2021-22.

We cannot turn those into a capacity verdict, and neither can anyone else. Two numbers required to do it are published nowhere: how many reports one valuer produces in a year, and what share of the 5,200 do residential or retrospective work at all — the occupational classification does not segment by asset class. Any article claiming to know whether the profession “can cope”, including this one, is filling those gaps with assumptions.

What the figures support is a ceiling, not a rate, and the distinction matters.

Most of those 213,000 events need no valuation: an arm’s length sale produces an actual price. The number measures the rate at which the 30 June 2027 question could become live. And the population it can become live for is closed. Section 112-155(1)(b) reaches only an asset the taxpayer “acquired… and then held… throughout the period… ending at the end of 30 June 2027”. Anyone who buys after that date is outside Subdivision 112-E entirely.

So this is not a permanent workload but a fixed stock being worked through — heaviest just after 2027, thinning each year as it sells. The 2017 superannuation precedent shows the same decay in the tax data.

Set that first-year ceiling against 5,200 valuers and it is on the order of 40 each — an upper bound assuming every disposal needs a valuation, which it will not, and that no apportionment instrument arrives, which it may.

What it does to the profession

Two structural features make the retrospective flow harder than the raw count suggests.

The workforce is old at the top: 8.3 per cent of valuers are 65 or over, against 4.9 per cent across all occupations, 1.7 times the average. But the point is narrower than “the profession is ageing”, and the same table says so — the 55-and-over share of 24 per cent is close to the all-occupations 20.2 per cent, and valuers are slightly over-represented at 25 to 34 (25.2 against 22.7). What the data shows is a heavy tail near the end of working life: some of the people best placed to say what a property was worth in 2027 will not be practising in 2040.

And retrospective work gets harder with time. A 30 June 2027 valuation prepared in 2027 rests on contemporaneous evidence; the same valuation in 2045 rests on whatever survives — records that have moved between systems, listings that no longer exist, no ability to inspect the property as it then stood. It does not become impossible, it becomes slower, more caveated and more contestable, which is the same thing as more expensive.

On price, we will describe the mechanism and stop there. Concentrated demand against a workforce that cannot be expanded quickly produces longer lead times and higher fees; that is ordinary economics, not a forecast. We are not going to put a number on it, both because we cannot support one and because we are not a disinterested party.

The precedent everyone reaches for is the wrong one

Australia introduced capital gains tax in 1985 without a valuation crisis, often offered as reassurance. It is the opposite, and the Parliamentary Library explains why:

“Assets acquired before 20 September 1985 (pre-CGT assets) are currently exempt from CGT. This ‘grandfathering’ of pre-CGT assets is unique to the Australian CGT. All other countries that have introduced a CGT have taxed the gains that arise after the date of introduction of the tax, regardless of whether the asset was acquired before or after that date.”

1985 produced no mass valuation event because the design grandfathered rather than valued — an approach the Parliamentary Library says no other country took. The 2027 reform does not grandfather, and it reaches pre-1985 assets too: section 112-175 brings them into the deemed sale for gains accruing after 1 July 2027.

One reading runs the other way and is more urgent than ours. CPA Australia told the Senate committee that “every Australian holding a CGT asset on 30 June 2027, which is potentially millions of taxpayers, must establish market value at that date”. We think that overstates it: nothing in the Act requires establishing anything on that date, and the obligation crystallises only on a later realisation event for an asset inside the closed cohort. But readers will meet that framing, and a professional body reading the same words reached a more alarming conclusion than we did.

The closest real precedent is the 30 June 2017 superannuation changes, which set a fixed date at which fund assets had to be valued. It is still visible in the tax data: 6,105 funds brought gains deferred under that transitional relief to account in 2023-24, down from a peak above 10,000 in the years just after 2017 — the decay curve a closed cohort produces. (Superannuation funds, SMSFs included, are excluded from the 2027 reform; 2017 is cited here only as a precedent for a fixed-date valuation obligation.) What it did to lead times and fees at the time was never published.

Methodology

• The Act: Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 (No. 49, 2026), assent 26 June 2026, Schedule 1 item 13, read from the as-made text on the Federal Register. Quotations are from ss 112-155, 112-175 and 112-185. A companion Act, the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 (No. 50), carries the rate changes; this article makes no claim about rates.
• Instrument status as at 4 August 2026: the Federal Register’s “Authorises” list for the Act returns “0 total — No results to display”, and API queries for 2026 legislative instruments made under the ITAA 1997, and for instruments whose titles contain “Apportion” or “Capital Gains”, return nothing relevant. ⚠️ A date of 1 October 2026 is circulating as though it were a government commitment. It is not. It is a recommendation in CPA Australia’s submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee: “We recommend the draft apportionment method instrument under section 112-185 be released for public consultation by 1 October 2026.”
• Valuer numbers: Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile for ANZSCO 224512 Valuers, which states its six-digit source as the ABS 2021 Census, on a place-of-usual-residence and main-job basis. This is 2021 Census data, not a current estimate. The site was unreachable during research and the profile was read from an archived capture; the underlying census basis is unaffected. The “24 per cent aged 55 or over” is our sum of the three published bands (9.3 + 6.4 + 8.3), and the all-occupations comparator is the same sum on that column. Note that the “on the order of 40” figure divides a 2023-24 flow by a 2021 workforce count.
• Rental and CGT figures: ATO Taxation Statistics 2023-24, Individuals Table 27A and CGT Table 1, via the data.gov.au release. The ATO notes the CGT series is drawn from schedules processed by 31 October 2025, is “not necessarily complete”, and breaks at 2019-20.
• Not published: reports per valuer per year, or the residential and retrospective share of the profession — no public source exists. Any Australian Property Institute membership count, unverifiable against a primary source. And CPA Australia’s $675–825 million transitional cost estimate, which rests on its own assumed share of investors selling rather than tax office data; we mention it only so readers recognise it elsewhere.
• We are valuers, not tax advisers. This describes what the legislation says and what published statistics show. It is not tax advice, and whether any particular asset is affected is a question for your accountant.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a valuation before 1 July 2027?

Nothing in the Act requires you to obtain one on that date, and many properties are not affected at all. Your main residence remains CGT exempt. Superannuation funds, including SMSFs, are excluded from the reform. So are foreign and temporary residents, and eligible new residential dwellings and affordable housing have their own arrangements. For an asset that is caught, section 112-155(3) makes the default measure of capital proceeds its market value just before 1 July 2027; the alternative, an apportioning method under section 112-185, requires a legislative instrument, and as at 4 August 2026 none has been registered — that may change. Note 2 to section 112-155(4) means the choice between them does not have to be made until you lodge the return for the year you sell. So the practical question is not whether a valuation is due in 2027, but whether you want that date’s value evidenced while it is current rather than reconstructed years later. That is a decision for you and your accountant, and we have a commercial interest in the answer.

How many valuers are there in Australia?

About 5,200 people had valuing as their main job at the 2021 Census, under ANZSCO code 224512. A larger figure of 13,800 is also published for the broader “Land Economists and Valuers” group, from a different collection the statistical agency says does not sum with the narrower one. How many of either do residential or retrospective work is not published anywhere.

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This article is general information about Australian tax legislation as it affects property valuation — it is not tax, legal or financial advice. Landmark Valuations provides valuation services and therefore has a commercial interest in this subject. Last verified 4 August 2026.

See also: Capital Gains Tax Valuation · Preparing for 1 July 2027 · Retrospective Valuations · The apportionment formula blind spots