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Main residence

Last updated 24 May 2020

Generally, if you are an individual - not a company or trust - you can ignore a capital gain or capital loss from a CGT event that happens to your ownership interest in a dwelling that is your main residence (also referred to as 'your home').

To get the full exemption from CGT:

  • the dwelling must have been your home for the whole period you owned it
  • you must not have used the dwelling to produce assessable income, and
  • any land on which the dwelling is situated must be 2 hectares or less.

If you inherited a dwelling or a share of a dwelling and it was not the deceased's main residence, you may not get a full exemption (see flowchart 6 in appendix 3, and Inherited main residence).

If you are not fully exempt, you may be partially exempt if:

  • the dwelling was your main residence during only part of the period you owned it
  • you used the dwelling to produce assessable income, or
  • the land on which the dwelling is situated is more than 2 hectares.

Short absences from your home - for example, annual holidays - do not affect your exemption.

If a dwelling was not your main residence for the whole time you owned it, some special rules may entitle you to a full exemption or to extend the partial exemption you would otherwise get. These rules can apply to land or a dwelling if:

Special rules

There are some special CGT rules that are not covered in this chapter that may affect you if your home was:

  • destroyed and you receive money or another asset as compensation or under an insurance policy (see chapter 7)
  • transferred to you as a result of its conversion to strata title, or
  • compulsorily acquired (see chapter 7).

If you own more than one dwelling during a particular period, only one of them can be your main residence at any one time.

The exception to this rule is if you move from one main residence to another. In this case you can treat two dwellings as your main residence for a limited time (see Moving from one main residence to another for more information). Special rules apply if you have a different main residence from your spouse or dependent children (see Having a different home from your spouse of dependent child).

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