iscover When even experienced accountants can't see a clear path
TaxIt's 9pm and your inbox still isn't empty. One client wants to know if they should restructure before the new CGT rules start. Another is caught in a family dispute over their trust. There's an AML checklist you haven't finished, an ATO letter that needs a response, and a quiet worry that the approach you've relied on for twenty years doesn't work anymore.
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. Australian accountants are heading into the toughest tax planning and lodgement season in memory. Clients are stressed, AML obligations are landing on practices for the first time, family disputes are spilling into succession and restructuring decisions, the 2026 Budget has rewritten long-held rules, and the ATO is taking a noticeably more assertive approach to compliance. These pressures will build through from now to March - June 2027, when decisions made for clients will start to set their position under the new landscape for years to come.
"This is the most stressed-out I've seen the accounting industry," says James McPhedran, Head of Product and co-founder of Elfworks. "Experienced practitioners who have always been able to see a clear path are struggling to see one. The lack of practical experience from law drafters and minimal industry consultation has left accountants to negotiate a minefield. Should my clients restructure? What are my AML obligations? Should we use the trust election? Does every client really need to value their goodwill? And how do we even begin to explain all this to clients so they can decide what to do?"
A Budget that rewrote the playbook
For decades, practitioners have relied on hard-won experience in business and investment structuring and tax planning. The 2026 Budget has upended much of it. New CGT rules, including the 30% minimum tax and indexation for realisations from 1 July 2027, mean gains must be allocated across two regimes. Trust elections, goodwill valuations and restructuring options now need to be weighed client by client, and every one of those conversations has to be explained in plain language before a client can make an informed choice.
"The 2026 Budget changed decades of stored best-practice approaches and added numerous tasks to an already groaning to-do list for accountants," says Ian Youngman, co-Founder and Managing Director of Elfworks. "That same Budget made us expand the Elfworks platform. We started with tax research and advice drafting. Now it's a platform where the safe harnessing of AI is channelled towards helping public practice accountants navigate the next three to four years."
Where AI genuinely helps
AI won't replace professional judgement, and it shouldn't. What it can do is take the heavy, repetitive and high-stakes analysis off your desk, so you have more time to think about how the changing landscape affects each client, and to have the conversations that matter. Elfworks' agentic tools work through a client's specific facts step by step, apply the relevant legislation, ATO rulings and case law, and show their working at every stage so you can verify the outcome before it reaches a client.
In practice, Elfworks can:
- model whether a formal goodwill or real property valuation is worth the cost compared with the ATO valuation method,
- compare restructuring and trust election scenarios side by side,
- draft intra-group contracts that stand up to scrutiny, and
- produce clear, client-ready explanations that help clients understand their options and make a decision.
Every output is built to be reviewed, not blindly trusted, consistent with the professional scepticism the TPB expects of practitioners using AI.
Hope for the 2027 season
The months between March and June 2027 will test every practice. The volume of decisions, the stakes for clients and the scrutiny from the ATO won't ease. But you don't have to face it with the same hours and the same tools you had before the Budget. Used safely, with you firmly in control, AI can help restore the clear path so many experienced accountants feel they've lost, and give stressed clients confidence that their adviser has it in hand.
If this season already feels heavy, see how Elfworks can carry some of the load. Visit Elfworks.ai
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