How to get your CGT report ready for tax time

This is the page everything else has been building towards. Every buy, sell and dividend you have put into SavvyPortfolio rolls up into one screen: your capital gains events for the year, the FIFO cost base behind each one, the 50% CGT discount where it applies, and your dividend income with its franking credits alongside.

There is nothing to fill in on this page. The report reads what is already in your portfolio, so producing it takes about thirty seconds.

You need your trades in the app first. Importing your CommSec CSV covers the fast way, and recording a dividend covers the income side. For the rules underneath the numbers, read How to calculate CGT on shares in Australia.

One thing up front: this report is software-generated. It is not tax advice, and it should be reviewed by a registered tax agent before anything from it goes on a return.

Step 1 — Open your CGT Report

Click CGT Report in the side nav. The page opens with a small uppercase kicker reading TAX DOCUMENT · AUTO-GENERATED, then the heading Capital Gains Tax.

Read the subline underneath before anything else: "FY 2023–24 · All portfolios · FIFO cost-base method · prepared 28 June 2024." That single line tells you which financial year you are looking at, which portfolios are included, which cost-base method was used, and when the report was generated.

FIFO means first in, first out. When you sell part of a holding, the sale is matched against your oldest parcels first, which is what the ATO expects unless you have specifically identified different parcels. It is the same engine on the free plan as on Pro.

Step 2 — Check the financial year

Above the numbers sits a row of financial year chips: FY20 FY21 FY22 FY23 FY24. The report opens on the current financial year, so FY24 is already selected here and you do not have to touch it. On the line below the chips sits a portfolio select reading All Portfolios, with the two export buttons next to it.

You click a chip only when you want to look further back. Australian financial years run 1 July to 30 June, so FY24 covers 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024. A sale on 28 June 2024 sits in FY24; one on 2 July 2024 sits in FY25. Getting the chip right is the difference between a report that matches your return and one that looks empty for no reason.

That last point is worth remembering, because it catches people out every July. If you open this page a few days into the new financial year and see nothing, the data is not missing — the new year has barely started and has no events in it yet. Step back one chip to the year you are actually lodging for.

Step 3 — Read the numbers

Five stat cards summarise the year. Because the report opens on All Portfolios, these are your whole account, not one portfolio. In the demo data they read: CGT events 3, across 3 holdings; Gross gain +$267.21, 2 long · 1 short; Capital losses −$0.00; 50% discount −$117.57, on 2 long-term; and the FINAL card, Taxable gain $149.64.

Read them left to right and the arithmetic is visible. Three disposals produced a gross capital gain of $267.21. There were no capital losses to apply against them. Two of the three parcels had been held longer than 12 months, so half of those gains drops out under the CGT discount, which is the $117.57. What remains, $149.64, is the taxable gain.

That last card is the one your tax agent cares about most. It is the net figure after the discount, not before it.

The demo account holds three portfolios, which is why three separate holdings show up here. If you want one portfolio rather than the whole account, change the portfolio select from All Portfolios and every figure on the page follows it.

Step 4 — Check every event, itemised

Below the stat cards is the CGT events card — headed CGT events, with 3 events · by date on the right — and columns Sold / Holding / Qty / Proceeds / Held / Taxable. There is one row per disposal in the selected year.

The demo has three rows: 20 Jan 24 · CBA · 20 · $2,080.05 · 12MO · 50% · $81.04, 15 Jan 24 · BHP · 30 · $1,435.05 · 12MO · 50% · $36.53, and 01 Mar 24 · ZIP · 200 · $210.05 · 11MO · $32.07. Read the first one across: twenty CBA shares sold on 20 Jan 24 for $2,080.05 in proceeds, held past the 12-month mark, producing $81.04 of taxable gain. The three taxable figures add up to the $149.64 on the stat card.

The Held column is the one to scan. It shows the whole months you held the parcel, and a green 50% tag when the discount was applied — CBA and BHP carry it, ZIP at 11MO does not. Look at the tag rather than the month count: the discount needs the sale to fall after the twelve-month anniversary of the purchase, so a parcel can read 12MO and still miss out. A few days either side of that date can double the tax on a gain, which is exactly why this column is on the report rather than buried.

Check the row count here against your own records. If a sale you remember making is missing, the transaction behind it is missing too.

Step 5 — Add in your dividend income

Scroll to the Dividend income section. Four cards summarise the income side of the year: Total Dividends tagged INCOME, Franked Amount tagged FRANKED, Unfranked Amount tagged UNFRANKED, and Franking Credits tagged OFFSET.

The report does not go looking for dividends on your behalf, so all four cards read $0.00 until you have recorded a payment. With the CBA dividend from recording a dividend entered — 30 shares, $2.10 per share, fully franked — they read Total Dividends $63.00, Franked Amount $63.00, Unfranked Amount $0.00 and Franking Credits $27.00. You enter the dividend; the app works out the credit.

Those tags are doing real work. Dividends are assessable income, and the franking credit is an offset against the tax on it. They sit in a different part of your return from your capital gains, which is why the report keeps them in a separate section rather than adding them to the gain.

Every figure here comes from the dividends you recorded against your holdings. If this section is emptier than you expect, the payments have not been entered yet — the CGT report will not invent them.

Step 6 — Send it to your accountant (Pro)

Two buttons sit in the report header, next to the portfolio select: Download PDF and Export to accountant. Both are Pro features. On the free plan, clicking Export to accountant opens a dialog headed CSV export of CGT reports is a Pro feature, explaining "You're on the Free plan. Upgrade to Pro to unlock CSV export of CGT reports and every other Pro feature." Nothing downloads and nothing is lost — close it and the report is still there. The ATO-ready PDF and the CGT CSV export are part of the paid plan, along with unlimited portfolios and holdings.

Most of what you have read on screen so far is free: the FIFO engine, the 50% discount, the five stat cards, the itemised events, the dividend income section and the compliance notes. The lettered Summary panel and the Complete Tax Position panel are the two that sit blurred behind a Pro lock until you upgrade.

Four compliance notes sit near the foot of the report and are worth reading once. FIFO method: "Sells matched against oldest parcels first, per ATO requirements." 12-month discount: "Long-term gains automatically get the 50% discount." Franking credits: "Dividend franking flows into your summary at Item 11." Not tax advice: "Software-generated. Always review with a qualified accountant."

On the free plan you can still work from this page. Your accountant can read the numbers off it, or you can copy them across. Pro just saves the retyping.

What you should see

One page, in this order: the header telling you it is FY 2023–24, all portfolios, FIFO; five stat cards reading 3 CGT events, +$267.21 gross gain, −$0.00 capital losses, −$117.57 of discount and a taxable gain of $149.64; three itemised rows, the first showing 20 CBA sold on 20 Jan 24 for $2,080.05 with a 12MO · 50% Held badge; and — once you have recorded it — $63.00 of fully franked dividend income carrying $27.00 of franking credits.

That is a complete picture of one financial year. A capital gains figure with the disposals behind it shown in full, and a dividend income figure with its offset. It is the answer to "what do I give my accountant in July", and it took no data entry beyond importing a CSV and entering your dividends.

Common gotchas

• Download PDF and Export to accountant are Pro. The stat cards, the FIFO calculations, the 50% discount, the itemised events and the compliance notes are all free; the Summary and Complete Tax Position panels are Pro-locked. Nothing about the numbers changes when you upgrade, only how you get them out.
• Check the FY chip before you read anything. FY24 means 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024. A sale in June 2024 sits in FY24, one in July 2024 in FY25. The report always opens on the current financial year, so an empty-looking report in early July is nearly always the wrong chip rather than missing data.
• The report only knows what you have entered. A sale that never made it into your transactions will not appear as a CGT event, and the gain will be missing from your return. The same goes for dividends — the income section stays at $0.00 until you record them. Reconcile the event count against your broker statements.
• The 50% discount needs more than 12 months. The Held column shows the whole months held plus a green 50% tag when the discount applied. No tag means the full gain is taxable, even when the month count looks close.
• Dividends and capital gains are separate. The franking credits in the dividend section are an offset against tax on income, not a reduction of your capital gain. They belong in a different part of the return.
• It is software-generated, not tax advice. Review the report with a registered tax agent before lodging. Anything unusual, such as inherited shares, a share split, a demerger or an off-market buyback, needs a human to look at it.

What's next

That is the beginner path complete: account, portfolio, imported trades, manual entries, reading the dashboard, filtering holdings, drilling into a position, recording dividends, and now a CGT report for the year.

The natural follow-on is the EOFY tax checklist for share investors, which covers what to do in the weeks before 30 June rather than after it. Some decisions, such as whether to realise a loss or hold a parcel past the 12-month mark, can only be made before the year closes. Work through it with your tax agent well before June.