A Bigger Tax Concession Doesn't Fix an Unready Business

The tax news for business owners just got better. On 26 June 2026, the government's tax reform package received Royal Assent — it's now law, not a proposal sitting in a discussion paper. Buried in it is a change that matters directly to you: the 50% active asset CGT concession — one of four small business concessions that can reduce or eliminate tax when you sell — now applies to businesses turning over up to $10 million, up from $2 million. From FY2027–28, that puts almost every business in the $1.5M–$10M range inside the concession for the first time.

If your business turns over, say, $4 million, you were previously locked out of that concession entirely. Now you're not. All four small business CGT concessions, including the 15-year exemption and the retirement exemption, stay in place alongside it. That's not spin. It's a real, legislated win, and it's worth understanding properly with your accountant.

But there's a part of this worth sitting with before you file it away as good news and move on.

A tax concession changes what happens at the finish line. It doesn't change whether you get there.

Here's what I mean by that, in practical terms.

If your business depends on you for every decision over $5,000: quoting, hiring, dealing with a difficult client, deciding what gets prioritised this week, the concession doesn't touch that.

It's still true the day after the legislation passes.

If nobody, including you, can fully explain why last quarter's margin moved the way it did, without pulling apart the books first, the concession doesn't touch that either.

A buyer doing due diligence will find the same unexplainable numbers whether the tax treatment on the sale is generous or not.

If your best tradesperson, your longest-serving office manager, or you yourself walking out the door for four weeks would mean the business genuinely struggles to function - that's not a tax problem, and no concession fixes it. It's an operational one, and it's the one that actually determines what the business is worth and whether it can be sold at all.

Eligibility and readiness are two different questions

Qualifying for the concession is a tax and structuring question. Turnover tests, active asset rules, connected entity aggregation, timing of the sale. That's real, worth getting right, and it's exactly what your accountant is for.

Whether the business is actually worth what you think it is, and whether someone else could run it without you standing in the middle of every decision, is a different question entirely - and it's the one that determines whether you ever get to use the concession for something meaningful.

Here's the scenario that plays out more often than owners expect.

A buyer's advisor sits down to do due diligence on a business that, on paper, looks exactly like the kind of business this new threshold was built for. Good revenue, comfortably inside the $10 million band, healthy-looking margins. Then the questions start. Who signs off on jobs over a certain size? What happens to the pipeline if the owner isn't the one quoting? Where's the documentation for how pricing gets set? A week later, the offer on the table is materially lower than the number the owner had in his head, or, there's no offer at all, because the buyer can see they'd be acquiring the owner, not the business.

A bigger tax concession on that outcome is still a bigger concession on a smaller number. Sometimes it's a bigger concession on a deal that never happens.

The same work either way

This is the part that most owners miss because it sounds almost too simple: the work that makes a business more valuable to sell is the same work that makes it possible to step back from, hand over, or bring in help without everything grinding to a halt. Clearer profit that you can explain without opening the books. Systems that live in documents and processes, not exclusively in your head. A team that can carry real decisions without you in the room.

Do that work, and the improved tax treatment becomes a genuine bonus sitting on top of a business that was already worth more, to a buyer or to you. Skip it, and the bigger concession just means a smaller number gets a slightly better rate applied to it.

Three questions worth asking yourself this week

• If you took four weeks off with no phone contact, what would happen to revenue, and who would make the calls only you currently make?

• Could you explain why last month's profit was what it was, without opening the books to check?

• If someone wanted to buy the business in the next two years, do you know what would need to be true for that to actually happen?

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If any of those questions gave you pause, that's worth more attention than the tax rate you'll eventually pay. The rules just got better. Whether your business is actually ready to use them is still entirely up to you.

👉 Take the Exit Readiness Assessment: (Click here) - twelve questions, five minutes, a clear picture of where your business actually sits, and what you need to do next to make your business work for you.