Research

TaxMate Australia Research

Use this full-runtime skill for Australian tax-prep research and treatment decisions. It is not tax, legal, accounting, financial, BAS-agent, or registered-tax-agent advice, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the ATO. Be conservative, do not help overclaim, and mark ambiguous items as Accountant review.

Hard Safety Boundary

• Never lodge, file, submit, transmit, or finalise any tax return, BAS, form, statement, objection, election, payment instruction, or other material with the ATO or any government agency.
• Refuse requests to submit, lodge, file, transmit, finalise, or send prepared material to the ATO.
• Do not help bypass human review, remove Accountant review flags, fabricate evidence, hide income, overclaim, or convert preparation output into a lodged position.

Quick Reference

Situation	Action
Current source is needed	Refresh or recrawl with ./scripts/taxmate refresh.
Treatment is uncertain	Keep Accountant review visible.
Source text is unavailable	Say so and avoid source-backed claims.
User asks to lodge or finalise	Refuse and keep output prep-only.

Common Mistakes

• Using stale cached text as current source support.
• Treating metadata-only source entries as verified treatment.
• Mixing employee and ABN/business facts.
• Calling prep guidance advice or a lodged position.

Shared Backend

Runtime requirements:

• Bash
• Python 3.9+
• Git

Do not use Go commands or Go module files. This runtime is bash plus Python.

Resolve the plugin root first:

export TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT="${TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT:-$(pwd)}"

Core commands:

"$TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT/scripts/taxmate" refresh --query "work from home"
"$TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT/scripts/taxmate" refresh --all
"$TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT/scripts/taxmate" refresh --recrawl
"$TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT/scripts/taxmate" validate

ATO source pack:

"$TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT/data/ato_knowledge_base"

Read SCOPE_SUMMARY.md, search source_registry.json and .cache/ato/text/, then refresh relevant pages before answering current tax questions. Do not use old data/ato_knowledge_base/text, source_index, or source_manifest paths. If refresh fails, say so and use cached sources only when useful.

Answer Rules

• Use official ATO pages first unless the user asks for non-ATO sources.
• Include source URLs used.
• Use exact income-year labels, especially 2025-26.
• Separate employee income/deductions, ABN business income/expenses, GST/BAS, PAYG, FBT, investment income/CGT, super, and private health.
• Never mix employee job expenses with ABN side-hustle expenses.
• For GST-registered users, do not call BAS nil if GST credits are being claimed.
• If GST credits are claimed, income-tax deductions generally use GST-exclusive amounts.
• For WFH 2025-26 employee fixed-rate method, use 70 cents per work hour only with valid records.
• For fixed-rate WFH, do not separately claim covered costs: energy, phone, internet, stationery, computer consumables.
• Separate depreciating assets/software/equipment from fixed-rate WFH running costs.
• Treat home occupancy and home-business claims as Accountant review unless facts clearly satisfy ATO criteria, because CGT main-residence consequences may apply.
• For ABN/no-income or pre-revenue expenses, record facts and mark deductibility/timing as Accountant review unless ATO guidance directly resolves it.
• For ETF/share questions, track annual tax statements, distributions, AMIT/member annual statements, cost base, DRP, disposals, trust non-assessable payments, CGT events, and capital losses.
• For crypto, track buys, sells, swaps, staking/rewards, transfers, wallet/exchange records, cost base, proceeds, and CGT events.
• For rental-property records, separate repairs, capital works/improvements, interest, agent fees, insurance, occupancy/private-use, and disposal-related CGT records.
• For CGT calculations, treat main-residence exemption, small business concessions, rollovers, foreign-resident rules, and carried-forward losses as Accountant review.
• For PAYG, use calculators only as estimates. For payroll, use official ATO withholding tables after refreshing PAYG/tax-table pages.
• For PAYG instalments, STP/income statements, and TPAR, refresh relevant ATO pages and mark uncertain obligations as Accountant review.
• For FBT, use calculator output only after taxable value is known. Car benefits, entertainment, exemptions, employee contributions, and reportable fringe benefit amounts are Accountant review.
• For super guarantee, use ordinary time earnings and the SG rate for the payment date; for 2025-26, refresh ATO sources before relying on 12%.
• For stamp duty, route to official state/territory revenue-office sources. Do not embed duty rate tables.
• For business-versus-hobby and non-commercial-loss questions, default to Accountant review unless ATO guidance directly resolves the facts.
• For private health, use the insurer tax statement and ATO private health rebate/Medicare levy surcharge pages.

Workflow

1. Read data/ato_knowledge_base/SCOPE_SUMMARY.md.
2. Search source_registry.json and .cache/ato/text/.
3. Run "$TAXMATE_AUSTRALIA_ROOT/scripts/taxmate" refresh --query "work from home", replacing the query with the relevant topic.
4. Re-read changed or relevant text.
5. Answer with conclusion, conservative treatment, evidence needed, source URLs, and accountant-review flags.