Why selling your shares is about to become more taxing

August 23, 2026 — 5:00am

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If you think about some of the richest people in the world, the majority of them have one thing in common. Their wealth, in all its gross excess, is not just sitting in their bank account or in big dollar-sign bags in a bank vault somewhere. It’s almost all tied up in shares and other investments, which they would have to sell if they actually wanted to buy a new yacht or something.

Typically, billionaires aren’t super keen on selling their shares for a multitude of reasons, partly due to the control those shares give them in whatever companies they run, but mainly because they’d then have to pay tax, something they famously hate doing.

But for the rest of us schmucks, if we buy shares, we may want to sell them at some point, which in many ways is easier said than done.

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Dominic PowellMoney Editor

Until relatively recently, selling shares was a pretty straightforward thing: if you’ve made a profit, that profit gets taxed at your marginal income tax rate during the financial year you sell. If you’ve held the asset........

© The Age