A scare campaign, meet a calculator.
There is a campaign running right now telling renters their rent is about to jump because the government changed negative gearing and capital gains tax.
It is a good scare. It is also wrong, and you do not need an economics degree to see why. You need a calculator.
This page works through it, claim by claim, using the government's own numbers.
Every figure here comes from Treasury, the ATO and the Budget papers. Check them yourself. The links are at the bottom.
They’re coming for mum and dad investors.
Name one landlord whose tax just changed.
Every residential property bought before 7:30pm on 12 May 2026 keeps negative gearing for the life of the investment, until it is sold. Not for a transition period. Permanently.
That covers the entire existing rental stock.
A landlord raises rent to cover rising costs. This reform raises the cost of holding an existing rental by nothing, so the question stands.
Which landlord, specifically, has a bigger tax bill because of this? There isn’t any.
Source: Treasury Budget 2026–27 factsheet, Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Tax Reform (transitional arrangements; policy impacts). ATO, Rental properties: other tax considerations.
Landlords will pass the higher tax onto renters.
To pass a cost onto you, there has to be a cost.
The whole rent scare runs on one assumption. Landlords face a higher bill and pass it down the line.
Follow the chain. Higher tax bill, then higher holding cost, then higher rent. Break the first link and the whole thing collapses.
For every existing landlord the first link is broken. Tax treatment frozen, holding cost unchanged, nothing to recover from a tenant.
Treasury's own modelled rent figure proves the point. Not a spike. Under $2 a week. Roughly the price of half a coffee.
Source: Treasury Budget 2026–27 factsheet, Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Tax Reform (housing impacts; market impacts).
Your rent is about to skyrocket.
Your landlord's tax bill: unchanged.
Put the three numbers a renter actually cares about side by side.
- Tax change for existing landlords: zero.
- Modelled rent effect of the policy: under $2 a week.
- Commonwealth Rent Assistance increases already delivered in 2023 and 2024: more than $20 a week for a single person on the maximum rate.
So a renter on assistance comes out roughly $18 a week ahead.
If the rent story were about your cost of living, the $20 would be the front page and the $2 would be the footnote. It is the other way around. Worth asking why.
Source: Treasury Budget 2026–27 factsheet (housing impacts). DSS and Services Australia, Commonwealth Rent Assistance rate increases 2023 and 2024.
This will choke off investment and dry up the rental market.
This reform doesn't touch one existing tenancy.
The reform only changes the rules for investors buying from 1 July 2027, and even then it does not ban negative gearing.
It gives a new investor two paths.
- Buy a new build and keep negative gearing and the capital gains discount in full.
- Or buy an established property and run it positively geared, carrying losses forward against future rental income.
This steers money toward building new homes instead of bidding up the houses that already exist. More dwellings means downward pressure on rents over time.
The scare campaign has the direction backwards.
Source: Treasury Budget 2026–27 factsheet (new build exemption; housing impacts). Budget 2026–27, Tax reform overview.
The facts aren't complicated. The campaign needs them to be.
Strip away the noise and the reform is simple. Everyone who already owns an investment property keeps every tax break they have. Anyone buying from now on can still negatively gear, they just have to build something new to do it, or run the property at a profit like any other business. No existing landlord's costs went up, so no existing landlord has a cost to pass on. Treasury models the rent effect at under $2 a week, against supply measures and rent assistance pushing the other way. The scare campaign works by hoping you will not run the numbers. You just did.