What Accountants Are Telling Clients to Do Before 1 July 2027

Most of what's been written about the 2027 reform is aimed at investors: what changes, who's grandfathered, what to value and when. Less has been written about what the accountants actually doing the calculations are telling their clients, and that commentary has converged on a message worth hearing directly, because it's less about the headline rate changes and more about a mechanical trap the rate changes create.

(For the full shape of the reform, start with our 2027 reform guide.)

The message: model now, on real numbers

Tax and accounting commentary published since the June 2026 Royal Assent keeps landing on the same instruction, and it isn't "wait and see." It's the opposite: work through a client's actual portfolio against the new rules before 1 July 2027, not after. The reason isn't caution for its own sake. Three separate mechanisms in this reform interact, and none of them can be sized up in isolation.

The loss-ordering trap

Under the current rules, if you're realising a capital loss, you generally have some choice about which gains you apply it against, and practitioners have long used that to preserve the 50% discount on the largest gains. From 1 July 2027, that choice narrows. Losses run through a fixed order in the method statement that works out your CGT for the year, and it isn't structured to protect the outcome you'd pick by hand. Applying a loss against the wrong category, or in the wrong order, can materially change what you owe, and the ordering is no longer something an investor can eyeball, the way it roughly could be under a single flat discount.

This is the part of the reform that shows up in professional commentary far more than in investor-facing coverage: it isn't a new rate, it's a new sequence, and getting the sequence wrong costs money.

Deductions can push up your minimum tax bill

Here's the counterintuitive one. The 30% minimum tax on capital gains is calculated off your taxable income for the year, and cost base indexation makes the gain it applies to already smaller than the raw sale-price difference. Because of how the two interact, a deduction that lowers your ordinary taxable income can, in the same year, raise the minimum tax charged on a capital gain. That's the opposite of how deductions normally behave, and it's exactly the kind of interaction a rule of thumb from before 2027 will get wrong.

None of this is a reason to defer deductions on principle. It's a reason to run the actual numbers for a year where you're planning to sell something, rather than assuming a deduction is unambiguously good the way it always used to be.

Portfolio-level pooling needs modelling before you buy, not after

If you're weighing up a property that would fall under the new negative gearing rules (see our grandfathering calculator for which side of the 12 May 2026 cutoff a specific property sits on), the loss doesn't quarantine property by property. It pools against every other quarantined property you hold, and a profitable one absorbs a loss on a newer one before anything gets held back. What that means for a purchase decision depends on the rest of your portfolio, not just the property in front of you, and that's a conversation worth having before you exchange, when the numbers can still change the decision, not after settlement when they can't.

Our deep dive on how the quarantine pool works covers the mechanics in full, including the worked example from the Act itself.

The valuation conversation is coming up early, on purpose

The other thing practitioners are raising well ahead of time is the 30 June 2027 valuation. It's not due yet and nothing is taxed because of it, but it's a value you can only capture once, on that date, and every valuer in the country will be fielding the same request in the weeks around it. Booking one early, particularly for anything held since before 1985, is advice that shows up consistently in professional commentary, not because the date is urgent but because the queue will be.

See why the 30 June 2027 valuation matters for what to do about it now.

What to bring to the conversation

If you're talking to your accountant about this before 1 July 2027, the useful starting point isn't "what changed" (they know), it's your own numbers:

• Every property in your portfolio, and which side of the 12 May 2026 cutoff each one sits on.
• Whether any are pre-1985 and due a valuation.
• What a realistic sale scenario looks like for anything you might dispose of in the next few years, so the loss-ordering and minimum-tax interactions can actually be modelled against a number instead of a hypothetical.

BrickTrack keeps that portfolio picture, purchase dates, deductions, and documents, in one place per property, which is most of what a modelling conversation like this actually needs on the table.

Common questions

Why are accountants saying "model now" instead of "wait until 2027"?

Because three parts of the reform (loss ordering, the minimum tax, and quarantining) interact, and none of them can be sized up on their own. Running a client's real numbers against the new rules is the only way to see what actually changes for that specific portfolio, and doing it now leaves time to act on what it shows.

Does the loss-ordering change affect every investor?

It matters most to anyone realising a capital loss alongside a gain, where the order losses are applied in changes the outcome. From 1 July 2027 that order is fixed by the method statement rather than chosen, which removes flexibility practitioners have relied on under the current discount system.

How can a deduction increase my tax bill?

Only indirectly, and only in a year you're also realising a capital gain. The 30% minimum tax is calculated off your taxable income for the year, so a deduction that lowers that income can, in the same year, increase the minimum tax charged on the gain. It's not a reason to avoid deductions, just a reason to model a sale year rather than assume.

Is this advice specific to property investors?

The mechanisms apply to any individual or trust realising capital gains, since the reform changes CGT broadly, not just for property. The portfolio-pooling point about negative gearing is property-specific; the loss-ordering and minimum-tax interactions apply to any asset class.

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This article is general information about legislation and published commentary, not tax advice. It draws on professional commentary published after the 26 June 2026 Royal Assent. Confirm how these interactions apply to your specific portfolio and any planned sale with a registered tax agent.