Portfolio — 18 June 2026

The government's dominant move on 18 June is a significant expansion of the small-business CGT concession regime, paired with a new instrument targeting the start-up ecosystem. The turnover threshold for the 50 percent active-asset CGT reduction rises from $2 million to $10 million, a fivefold lift that the government says extends eligibility to all 2.7 million active small businesses [TA-260618-pm-9cc27f4eff10].

That threshold change is the most consequential element: it repositions the concession from a narrow relief for micro-businesses to a mainstream entitlement across the small-business population, and it sets a politically visible number that will be hard for any future government to wind back without explicit legislative action.

Alongside the threshold change, the government released a consultation paper for a new Innovative Business CGT concession that would give early-stage investors a 50 percent discount on capital gains from eligible start-up shares [TA-260618-pm-9cc27f4eff10]. The consultation framing is deliberate: the measure is not yet legislated, which gives the government flexibility to calibrate eligibility criteria in response to industry input, but the public announcement locks in the policy direction.

The concession spans the Treasury, Small Business, and Industry and Innovation domains — a cross-portfolio signal that the government is framing innovation investment as an economic rather than a purely sectoral priority.

The PM also confirmed that income from all types of discretionary testamentary trusts will be exempt from the minimum tax [TA-260618-pm-35b06c6125a7]. This is a carve-out with significant estate-planning implications. The government's framing — aligning the treatment of labour and asset income while protecting discretionary testamentary structures — requires careful reading: the two positions sit in tension, and the trust exemption will attract scrutiny from those who read the minimum tax as an equity measure.

Taken together, the three announcements pursue a consistent framing: tax reform as a mechanism to ease household and business finances, not structural redistribution. The PM's media releases link all three measures to the broader cost-of-living narrative established in the Corangamite announcement the previous day, which connected housing and fuel security to household relief.

Today's tax package extends that narrative into the business and investment space, suggesting a coordinated communications strategy running across consecutive days rather than a single isolated announcement.