Budget 2026 – work, not much else

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

12 May 2026

Fiscal conditions and the Government’s priorities mean there will not be much in tonight’s Federal Budget for financial advisers notwithstanding there are some relatively low-cost easy wins that are capable of delivery.

Foremost amongst the easy wins is allowing financial advisers access to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) portal to give them equivalent access to other qualified relevant tax providers.

Access to the ATO portal has been on the Financial Advice Association of Australia (FAAA) Budget wish-list for a number of years and comes at minimal cost to the Government whilst helping reduce the marginal cost of delivering financial advice.

The other item which has been on the FAAA wish-list for more than a decade is simplifying and enhancing the tax deductibility of financial advice with the organisation having advocated for full deductibility of advice fees.

This is less likely to occur because it comes at a cost to the Budget and the Government can point to the September 2024 Tax Determination on the deductibility of financial advice as having gone some way to meeting advisers’ demands

Disappointingly for financial advisers, the Government’s announcement of multiple consultative processes around the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort here will be no major decisions announcements around either the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) levy or the levy funding the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR).

Stakeholder responses to the CSLR consultation around reform options to support ongoing sustainability do not close until just a week after the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, hands down the Budget meaning it will be many months before any formal Government response is announced notwithstanding the reality that the advice sub-sector cap will again be exceeded.

The reality for advisers is that what the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, delivers in tonight’s Budget will most likely be an increase in their workload as they help clients adjust to any changes announced around Capital Gains Tax (CGT) and negative gearing.

While Chalmers was remaining relatively coy about changes to the CGT over the weekend and yesterday, he did not at any time rule out that they were part of the process with Canberra backgrounding suggesting neither measure will be retrospectively applied.

In the meantime, the Regulatory Initiatives Grid released by the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services,  Daniel Mulino last week makes clear that the next tranche of the Government’s Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) remains well down the track whereas the Superannuation stapling and advertising ban is set to commence later this year.

Where DBFO is concerned, the Regulatory Initiatives Grid simply states that the Government has “concluded public consultation on exposure draft legislation for three of the five measures in tranche two, with further consultation on remaining measures to be undertaken in due course”.