⚠️ This is not tax or financial advice. This skill organises your records; it does not advise on, calculate, or lodge your tax. Always have a registered tax agent (human accountant) validate everything before lodging. See the full DISCLAIMER.
A Claude Skill that helps you prepare an organised, traceable, accountant-ready support pack for an Australian tax return (individual, sole trader, or SMSF) — so the expensive hours with your registered tax agent are spent validating, not sorting shoeboxes.
Built for professionals such as engineers and managers, residential/commercial property investors, share/ETF/crypto/commodity investors, and sole traders.
1. Gather your documents into one folder, ideally grouped like this:
My-Tax-FY26/
Income/ payment summaries / income statements, bank interest
Property/<address>/ agent statements, loan interest, rates, insurance,
depreciation schedule (one subfolder per property)
Shares-ETF/ dividend statements, annual tax statements, buy/sell contract notes
Crypto/ exchange reports or a crypto tax tool report
Work-expenses/ receipts, WFH hours diary, car logbook
Sole-trader/ invoices issued, business expense receipts, asset invoices
Prior-year/ last year's return or accountant pack (carry-forward items)
SMSF/ keep fund documents completely separate from personal ones
PDFs, scans/photos, CSV and Excel files all work. Don't rename or edit the files — originals stay traceable.
2. Give Claude access — connect the folder (or attach the files) in a chat with the skill installed.
3. Type what you want, for example:
"Create my tax accountant pack for FY2025-26"
or just one category:
"Summarise my investment property expenses for FY26"
Claude confirms the scope, asks clarifying questions (including work-use percentages for any mixed personal/work expenses), then builds an accountant-ready Excel workbook plus a one-page cover brief for your registered tax agent. If you're unsure how to start, just ask "How do I use this?" — the skill walks you through this same setup.
Given your raw tax documents for one Australian financial year (1 July – 30 June), the skill guides Claude to:
- Onboard you with a quick-start guide if you haven't provided documents yet.
- Scope the engagement first: entity (individual / sole trader / SMSF, kept strictly separate), financial year, categories in scope, your occupation/investor profile, and whether you have a prior-year pack.
- Verify current-year ATO figures via web search (e.g. the fixed-rate work-from-home rate, cents-per-km rate, instant asset write-off threshold) instead of relying on memorised rates, cite the ATO source, and note the ATO's current compliance focus areas relevant to your pack.
- Inventory every document into a source register with a Source ID (S001, S002 …), checking for duplicates, items dated outside the financial year, and missing expected documents per category (e.g. a rental pack without a loan interest statement).
- Run deduction discovery tailored to your profile — a short checklist interview (professional memberships, income protection insurance, donations, subscriptions, financial advice fees …) that surfaces documents you forgot you had. It never asserts deductibility — that stays with your accountant.
- Stop at the apportionment gate: every expense with mixed personal/work or personal/investment use (phone, internet, home office, car, travel, devices, mixed-purpose loans, private-use periods on a rental) needs a percentage from you — asked once, as one consolidated set of questions, with the basis recorded (diary, logbook, estimate). Claude never assumes or defaults a percentage.
- Present a plan and wait for your confirmation before building anything.
- Build an accountant-ready Excel workbook with:
- A Summary tab with category totals (linked by formula, not hard-coded) and notes on ATO rates verified, focus areas, and method choices;
- An Apportionment Summary tab — the single place your accountant sees every taxpayer-stated work/income-use percentage, its basis, and substantiation status, to apply in the final tax calculation;
- One ledger tab per category — property (mapped to standard ATO rental schedule headings), shares/ETFs (dividends, franking credits, AMMA/AMIT components, CGT events), crypto and commodities, PAYG income, work-related expenses, travel, sole trader business income & expenses, and SMSF fund-level records;
- A Carry-forward tab — capital losses carried forward, borrowing-expense spreads, depreciation schedules, and a CGT cost-base register for parcels still held, so next year's pack starts from this one;
- A Questions & Flags tab — the accountant's punch list of every ambiguity, missing record, or judgement call;
- A Source Register tab so every ledger line traces back to a specific document.
- Self-validate before delivering (every document registered, every line traceable, totals recompute, every mixed-use item on the Apportionment Summary, no TFN transcribed anywhere) and produce a one-page cover brief you can email your accountant.
The skill positions Claude as a preparer, never an adviser or lodger:
- Never calculates tax payable or refunds, and declines if asked (that's your registered tax agent's job).
- Never assumes, defaults, or estimates a work-use / income-use percentage — percentages come from you, with the basis recorded, or the item is flagged.
- Never decides contested deductibility (e.g. repair vs capital improvement, PSI classification) — it records the item and flags the question.
- Never invents, estimates, or "reasonably assumes" a figure — missing data becomes a blank cell plus a flag.
- Never alters or rounds amounts from source documents.
- Never transcribes a Tax File Number into the workbook or brief.
- Never mixes individual and SMSF records in one workbook.
- Escalates every ambiguity to you before proceeding.
- ❌ No tax or financial advice — it does not tell you what is deductible, what to claim, or how to structure anything.
- ❌ No tax calculation — it does not compute tax payable, refunds, offsets, marginal rates, CGT discounts, or SMSF tax. Apportionment percentages are recorded for your accountant to apply — never applied by the skill.
- ❌ No lodgment — it does not prepare or submit anything to the ATO or interact with myGov.
- ❌ Not a registered tax agent — it does not replace one. The output is an input to your accountant, not a substitute for them.
- ❌ No guarantee of completeness or accuracy — AI can misread documents, misclassify items, or miss things. Everything must be checked by a human professional.
v1.1 (July 2026)
- Apportionment clarification gate — Claude now stops and asks (once, as a consolidated question set) for the personal/work split on every mixed-use expense it can't find an answer for, and records the basis of each percentage.
- Apportionment Summary tab — a dedicated workbook tab listing every taxpayer-stated percentage for the accountant to apply in the final calculation; referenced from the Summary tab and cover brief.
- Quick-start onboarding — first-time users get a 3-step setup guide (folder structure, connect, what to type).
- Deduction discovery — persona-based checklists (engineers, managers, property/share/crypto/commodity investors, sole traders) to surface commonly forgotten records.
- Sole trader module — ABN/business income and expense ledgers, GST handling notes, instant-asset-write-off and PSI flags.
- Carry-forward tab — capital losses, borrowing-expense spreads, depreciation schedules, and a CGT cost-base register; accepts last year's pack as an input.
- Completeness & risk checks — expected-documents checklist per category, ATO compliance focus-area flags, and a no-TFN-transcription rule.
v1.0 — initial release: scoped engagement, ATO rate verification via web search, source register with traceable Source IDs, category ledgers, Questions & Flags, self-validation, cover brief.
Download au-tax-prep.skill from this repo and upload it via Settings → Capabilities → Skills (or drag it into a chat when prompted to add a skill).
Copy the skill folder into your personal skills directory:
# macOS / Linux
cp -r au-tax-prep ~/.claude/skills/au-tax-prep
# Windows (PowerShell)
Copy-Item -Recurse au-tax-prep "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\au-tax-prep"Then just ask Claude something like "Help me prepare my FY2025–26 tax pack" — the skill triggers automatically on Australian tax prep requests.
- "Help me get organised for my FY2025–26 individual tax return — here's a folder of receipts and statements."
- "Summarise my investment property income and expenses for FY26 from these agent statements."
- "Build an accountant pack from these dividend statements and my ETF annual tax statement."
- "I'm a sole trader engineer — organise my business income and expenses for FY26."
- "Organise my SMSF's records for the annual return." (produces a separate fund-level workbook)
- "How do I get started preparing my Australian tax documents?" (shows the quick-start guide)
au-tax-prep/
SKILL.md # The skill definition: workflow + guardrails
references/
quick-start.md # 3-step onboarding guide shown to first-time users
categories.md # Required fields + expected documents per category
# (property, shares, crypto, PAYG, WFH, sole trader,
# carry-forward, SMSF …)
deduction-checklists.md # Persona-based deduction discovery interviews
workbook-format.md # Exact Excel workbook structure (incl. Apportionment
# Summary and Carry-forward tabs) and cover-brief spec
au-tax-prep.skill # Packaged skill for one-click upload to Claude.ai
DISCLAIMER.md # Full disclaimer — read it
LICENSE # MIT
This skill and its outputs are provided for document organisation and record-keeping assistance only. They are not tax advice, financial advice, or legal advice, and using this skill does not create any accountant–client or adviser–client relationship.
Australian tax law and ATO rates, thresholds, and record-keeping rules change every year, and AI models can and do make mistakes — misread figures, wrong categories, missed items. Always engage a registered tax agent to review, validate, and lodge your return. You are solely responsible for the accuracy of anything you submit to the ATO.
Read the full DISCLAIMER before use.
MIT — free to use, copy, modify, and share. Provided "as is", without warranty of any kind.