Our Market Note:
The cash rate has risen three times this year — February, March and May — and sits at 4.35%. Underlying inflation was running near 3.5% in July against a 2.5% target. The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Board meets on 28 and 29 September, and markets are pricing roughly a two-in-three chance of another rise.
One of the pressures is coming from outside Australia. Global oil prices have risen sharply in recent weeks, running higher than the Bank assumed in its August forecasts, and Sarah Hunter named them as one of the inflation risks the Board is watching.
Speaking on 8 September, Reserve Bank Assistant Governor (Economic) Sarah Hunter was blunt about the limits of the tool she has:
“We can’t do anything about global oil prices with interest rates. So that is what it is.”
What the Bank can do, she said, is stop a global price shock settling into the way Australians think about prices generally. On the September decision itself:
“We are concerned about inflation, and if there is a sense that inflation’s going to be stronger than we think in the context of our forecast, that the Board may well have to raise interest rates to tackle that.”
Against that backdrop, three changes are worth your attention this month — one in each part of what we do. Two of them turn on what something was worth on a particular day, and one of those days has already passed.
One — Affluens360 Wealth Management
A self-managed super fund election dated 30 June 2026
Division 296 is now law and started on 1 July 2026.
The headline is familiar by now, but it is worth stating precisely, because the common version of it is wrong. Division 296 does not tax your superannuation balance, and it does not tax all of your earnings. Where a person’s total superannuation balance exceeds the large super balance threshold — $3 million for 2026–27 — an additional 15% applies to the portion of earnings attributable to the amount above that threshold. A further 10% applies above the very large super balance threshold of $10 million. Both thresholds are indexed.
For 2026–27, it is the total superannuation balance at the end of the income year that has to exceed the threshold. In later years it applies if the balance either just before the start of the year or at the end of it exceeds the threshold. Limited recourse borrowing arrangement amounts are disregarded in working out the balance for these purposes.
The tax is assessed to the individual, and can generally be paid from the super fund.
The part that has had far less attention
For a self-managed super fund, there is a one-off election available, and it points at a date that has already been and gone.
An SMSF can elect to make a capital gains tax adjustment: resetting the cost base of its capital gains tax assets to their market value as at the end of 30 June 2026, for the purpose of working out the fund’s Division 296 earnings. The stated intent is to recognise value that accrued before Division 296 started.
The terms matter as much as the concept:
- It applies to all capital gains tax assets the fund held at the end of 30 June 2026. It is not asset by asset.
- It is generally only available for assets the fund holds directly.
- It must be made in the approved form, and the Tax Office has not released that form yet.
- It must be made by the due date of the fund’s 2026–27 annual return.
- It cannot be revoked.
There is also a record-keeping obligation attached, and in most cases an actuary will need to be engaged to work out the amount attributable to a member.
Whether the election helps or harms depends entirely on the fund’s assets and what they have done since. This is not a decision to make from a newsletter, and nothing here is a recommendation to make it. What we would say is this: the valuation date is already behind us, the form does not exist yet, and the deadline is tied to a return that has to be lodged. That is a combination worth raising early rather than in the week the return is due.
If your balance is near or above $3 million, or you are a trustee of a fund with a member in that position, it is worth a conversation.
the Australian Taxation Office
Two — Affluens360 Tax & Business Advisory
Payday Super caught the contractors too
Since 1 July 2026, superannuation guarantee contributions must reach an employee’s fund within 7 business days of payday. The previous deadline was 28 days after the end of the quarter.
That is a change of kind, not degree. Most payroll processes were built around a quarterly rhythm with a month of slack at the end of it. Neither the rhythm nor the slack survives.
If you run a practice, this is the line worth reading twice. The Tax Office’s own page states that Payday Super does not change who you have to pay super for, and that this continues to include independent contractors paid mainly for their labour. A contracted practitioner can fall inside that description depending on the arrangement. Where they do, the 7 business days applies to them exactly as it does to a salaried employee.
Three further changes came with it.
Qualifying earnings. Super is now calculated on a new, broader term that brings together ordinary time earnings, all commissions, salary sacrifice contributions and other amounts. You now report both qualifying earnings and the super liability through Single Touch Payroll.
The super guarantee charge works differently. It is now assessed by the Tax Office rather than self-assessed, so employers no longer lodge a super guarantee statement. Its interest compounds daily at the general interest charge rate, and there is a new administrative uplift amount — which can be reduced by voluntary disclosure. One genuine improvement: the charge is now tax deductible, which it never used to be. Penalties moved from a maximum of 200% to 25% or 50% of the unpaid charge.
The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House has closed. It stopped taking new users in October 2025 and is no longer accessible at all.
The superannuation guarantee rate itself is unchanged at 12%.
The Tax Office has said its compliance approach in the first year recognises employers who try to do the right thing and fix issues quickly. That is a reasonable place to be standing — but it is not a reason to leave a payroll process unexamined.
Three — Affluens Property Group
Investors left the market before anyone else did
The Bureau of Statistics lending figures for the June quarter 2026, released on 14 August, show new loan commitments for housing of $97.6 billion — down 5.4% in number over the quarter.
The average conceals the interesting part. The two halves of the market moved at very different speeds:
- Investors: commitments down 8.6% in number and 10.2% in value, to 52,599 commitments worth $37.1 billion.
- Owner-occupiers: down 3.3% in number and 1.9% in value, to 81,626 commitments worth $60.5 billion.
- First home buyers: down 2.9% in number to 29,319 loans, though value edged up 0.2% to $18.4 billion.
Investors pulled back far harder than owner-occupiers. This was the first full quarter after 12 May, when the Budget limited negative gearing on established residential property to new builds from 1 July 2027.
We would not claim the tax change alone explains it — three rate rises this year did their own work, and Sarah Hunter made the point that the Reserve Bank does not try to separate those effects because what matters is the aggregate. But the order of events is on the record, and the gap between investor and owner-occupier behaviour is unusually wide.
Keeping it in proportion
Two things are worth saying plainly, because the coverage has been noisier than the data.
Measured against the same quarter a year earlier, investor lending is still up 8.1% in value. This is a turn, not a collapse.
And if you already held a residential investment property at 7:30pm AEST on 12 May 2026 — including under a contract signed but not yet settled — your negative gearing position is unaffected, for as long as you own it. Properties bought between that date and 30 June 2027 can be negatively geared up to 1 July 2027 but not after. Properties bought from 1 July 2027 cannot, unless they are an eligible new build.
the Bureau of Statistics lending figures
The thread running through all three
More of the tax system now turns on what things were worth on a particular day.
30 June 2026 for the self-managed super fund election. And 1 July 2027 for the capital gains tax changes, which replace the 50% discount with cost base indexation and a minimum 30% rate for individuals, partnerships and trusts — across all capital gains tax assets held at least 12 months, shares as well as property. Gains up to that date are still worked out under the current rules; gains after it under the new ones. Which puts the value of what you hold on that date in the middle of a future calculation.
The main residence exemption is untouched. So are the four small business capital gains tax concessions.
Neither of those dates asks anything of you this month. Both reward knowing what you hold and being able to show what it was worth.
What to actually do
Of the three, only Payday Super is operating on you right now. If you run a practice and you have not looked at how your payroll handles contracted practitioners since July, that is this week’s job rather than this quarter’s.
The other two are planning. There is no deadline in the next few months and no action that has to be taken in a hurry — and rearranging your affairs quickly around a tax rule is reliably how a manageable change becomes an expensive one.
What is worth doing, unhurriedly, is working out which of these three actually reach you. For most people at least one will, and at least one will not.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure in this note comes from a source you can open yourself: the Reserve Bank of Australia for cash rate movements and Sarah Hunter’s remarks, the Australian Taxation Office for Division 296 and Payday Super, the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the lending figures, and Treasury for the capital gains tax changes. All are linked above.
This article has been prepared by Affluens360 Wealth Management Pty Ltd ABN 46 152 465 462, Affluens360 Tax & Business Advisory (Tax Agent No. 26197318) ABN 30 141 730 449, and Affluens Property Group Pty Ltd ABN 88 662 857 203, for general information purposes only. It does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or individual needs. You should seek independent professional advice before acting. Affluens360 Wealth Management Pty Ltd ABN 46 152 465 462 is a Corporate Authorised Representative (No. 410582) of Advisory Circle Pty Ltd ABN 21 629 143 460 AFSL 513052.
