The federal government announced in the 2017 Budget that it would remove a capital gains tax (CGT) exemption for around 100,000 expatriate Australians who sell their main residence while overseas. While the measure was projected to raise $581 million over the forward estimates, it has been condemned by tax and legal experts as being “unjustifiably bad policy”, and will discourage Australians who are thinking of going overseas to work.
In particular, tax experts are concerned that the proposed reforms could potentially apply retrospectively from 1985, when CGT was introduced, thus generating massive tax bills:
