Contrary this is making a mountain out of a mole hill, but to...

Contrary this is making a mountain out of a mole hill, but to clarify:

Capital gains in Australia (for an individual) are added to your regular income, then taxed at your relevant tax rate. i.e, if my income for the year is $100, and I make $1 of capital gains, my income for the year for tax purposes will be $101.

Obviously without being AL's accountant we can only speculate, but at face value it's probably safe to assume AL is paying the top tax bracket which is 45% for every $1 over $180,000 (plus $51,667 to cover the lower brackets). As such one would expect AL to sell more shares to cover the tax liability.

This is an extremely over simplified view of it, and there are a heap of caveats and conditions which would change the above, but I hope this clears things up a little bit.