The promise of AI, realised: agentic AI for Australian accountants

Elfworks' two new agentic tools handle CGT allocation and intra-group contracts, doing the work for Australian accountants, not just answering their questions.

For years, accountants have been promised that AI would do more than answer questions – that it would actually help do the work. Rather than a single prompt-response exchange, an agentic tool can plan a sequence of steps, apply rules to a client's specific facts, generate a structured output, and flag where human judgement or a formal professional opinion is still required.

Elfworks has built two new agentic tools designed to help Australian accountants do the work in a couple of key ares: a CGT Allocation tool and an Intra-Group Transaction Contract Builder.

CGT allocation across two regimes

For asset realisations from 1 July 2027, the new CGT rules (30% minimum tax and indexation) require the allocation of any gains or losses across the new regime and the current 50% CGT discount regime. Accountants face a couple of difficult questions as part of this allocation problem: which part of the gain should be attributed to which regime and how, and does the nature and amount of the gain justify the cost of a ‘formal’ valuation at 1 July 2027 instead of using the ATO valuation method?

"This is exactly the kind of task agentic AI was made for," says Ian Youngman, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Elfworks. "It's not one question and one answer – it's a workflow with dozens of decision points, and the tool needs to show its working at every step so the accountant can verify it before it ever reaches a client."

Crucially, the tool doesn't just produce a number. It produces a client-ready comparison showing the tax outcome with a formal valuation or with the ATO valuation method, so accountants can have an informed conversation about whether the cost of a formal valuation is justified.

“For real property or intangible assets like goodwill, clients are required to either pay for a formal valuation or use the ATO valuation method. A real estate agent appraisal is not a ‘formal’ valuation. The issue with the ATO valuation method is the compounding nature of the formula behind the method”, says James McPhedran, Head of Product and Co-Founder of Elfworks.

“For example, if a client started a business on 1 July 2022 (cost of goodwill nil or $1) and sold the business 10 years later for $3m, the ATO valuation method will turn up a value at 1 July 2027 of $1,762. This means only $1,762 is subject to the 50% CGT discount while the remaining gain ($3m less the indexed 1 July 2027 cost base of $1,762) is subject to the new 30% minimum tax. In such cases, the cost of a formal valuation is well justified. If you can find a valuer that is.”

The Elfworks CGT Allocation tool can quickly show the value of a formal valuation to the client.

Intra-group contracts that meet the SNA Group and TR 2006/2 bar

The SNA Group case sharpened the ATO's focus on whether related-party charges for intra-group supplies of property, goods and services are genuinely deductible – and TR 2006/2 sets out the Commissioner's expectations for evidencing those arrangements. In practice, this means accountants and their clients need properly drafted contracts, not just intercompany journal entries, to support deductions for intra-group transactions.

The Elfworks Intra-Group Transaction Contract Builder is an agentic tool that walks through the nature of the supply, the parties involved, and the commercial terms, then drafts a contract structured to address the specific evidentiary requirements arising from SNA Group and TR 2006/2.

"Accountants have always known intra-group arrangements need documentation – the problem was always the time it took to draft something defensible for every entity in a group," says James McPhedran, Head of Product and Co-Founder of Elfworks. "The agent does the drafting, but it also explains why each clause exists by reference to the case law and the ruling, so the accountant is reviewing a reasoned document, not just accepting a black box."

As with the CGT tool, the output is designed to be checked, not blindly trusted – consistent with the professional scepticism Australian accountants are now expected to demonstrate under the TPB's guidance on AI use (see GS 55/2026).

Why agentic changes the calculation

The difference between a chatbot and an agent is the difference between advice and action. A chatbot can tell an accountant the rules; an agent applies them to a specific client's facts and produces a structured, reviewable output. That's the promise AI has carried for years – finally being realised in tools built for the specific, high-stakes workflows Australian accountants deal with every day.

Elfworks’ CGT Allocation tool and the Intra-Group Transaction Contract Builder are live now. Book a demo and see them run on a real file, not a demo script: allocate a gain across both CGT regimes, or draft an intra-group contract that stands up to SNA Group and TR 2006/2, in the time it takes to make a coffee.

Book a demo today at elfworks.ai.