The tax update that tells you who it affects

Instead of treating regulatory change as a generic broadcast that firms must then interpret and apply themselves, the Elfworks Tax Update flips the model. By harnessing AI to compare incoming legislative and regulatory changes against the specific client base a firm has already set up in Elfworks,  informed by data drawn through integrations with document management systems like FYI, the Elfworks Tax Update identifies exactly which clients are likely to be affected by a given change, before that change becomes a problem.

How it works

On the last day of every month, Elfworks publishes an update covering new legislation, relevant case law and ATO rulings. Each item comes with plain-English commentary and one to two multiple-choice questions, meaning the update doubles as a CPD module that can be completed directly inside the platform. Every monthly update carries between 50 and 75 minutes of CPD, and — notably — it's included in a firm's existing subscription at no additional cost.

Each update is built from source documents worked into structured Learning Modules by industry experts, ensuring the commentary is accurate, defensible and genuinely useful for practitioners rather than a repackaged press release. The real differentiator, however, is that the update runs against a firm's existing client list already held in Elfworks. That means instead of a partner or manager having to manually think through 'who does this affect?' the system does that matching automatically, surfacing the specific clients impacted by a specific change.

"Firms have always had access to tax updates — what they haven't had is a way to know, immediately, which of their clients those updates actually impact," says Ian Youngman, Managing Director of Elfworks. "The Elfworks Tax Update closes that gap. It's a capability no other Australian AI accounting platform currently offers. 
It takes the noise of ongoing legislative change and turns it into a targeted action list, matched against the client base a firm has already built inside Elfworks."

James McPhedran, co-founder of Elfworks, points to the compliance and training benefits built into the feature. "Every qualified accountant is carrying a CPD obligation on top of an already demanding workload," McPhedran says. "By embedding verifiable CPD directly into the update, complete with set learning outcomes and recorded completions, we're not asking firms to do more. We're making sure the work they're already doing to stay current also satisfies their professional obligations."

Security at the heart of design

As with every feature on the Elfworks platform, the Tax Update runs through Elfworks' Sovereign Language Model, which is an Australian-hosted AI model that keeps client data onshore. That means client information used to match firms against relevant regulatory changes is never processed offshore, giving firms a way to be proactive about legislative change without compromising on data security or client confidentiality.

The first tool that tells you before your clients ask

For firms juggling growing regulatory complexity against constrained senior staff capacity, the Elfworks Tax Update represents a broader shift Elfworks has been pushing since its founding: using AI not just to speed up research, advice and other tasks, but to change the way firms relate to change itself. Instead of discovering a legislative shift has affected a client months after the fact, firms using Elfworks can now see the impact, and the affected client list , the moment the update is published.

The Elfworks Tax Update is available now to all Elfworks subscribers, with the first monthly release covering 1 August to 31 August 2026.

Want to see the Elfworks Tax Update in action? Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or book a meeting here.