simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Rulings-and-Guidance

ATO Rulings & Guidance — Australian Tax Law, Structured for AI

67,000+ Australian Taxation Office documents as RAG-ready NDJSON/CSV — Edited Private Advice, public rulings and determinations, ATO Interpretative Decisions, practical compliance guidelines, taxpayer alerts, decision impact statements, practice statements and legislative instruments. Every document parsed into structured, typed fields for legal RAG, LLM fine-tuning, and tax research automation.

Machine-readable extracts of Australian Tax Office (ATO) legal documents, scraped from the ATO Legal Database. Each row is one ruling, decision, or guideline — fully parsed into structured columns (CSV) or JSON fields (NDJSON), with all multi-value entries pipe-delimited for downstream NLP, RAG ingestion, and legal AI over Australian tax law (ITAA 1997, ITAA 1936, GST Act).

Companion dataset: the legislation itself — the full text of the 22 ATO-administered Acts with per-section amendment history — is published separately at simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History. The two are designed to be used together: the documents here cite provisions, and that dataset resolves them. They are separate repos because they come from different sources under different licences (ATO content is CC BY 3.0 AU; the Federal Register of Legislation is CC BY 4.0 with its own mandatory attribution wording).

File formats

Each dataset is published in two parallel files with identical content and field order:

Format	Filename pattern	Best for
CSV (UTF-8)	<dataset>.csv	Pandas, spreadsheets, SQL bulk-load
NDJSON / JSON Lines	<dataset>.jsonl	datasets.load_dataset(), streaming, jq, DuckDB, RAG ingestion

JSON keys are identical to CSV column names — the schema tables below describe both formats.

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Contents

• Dataset Splits
• Quick Start
• Schema
  • Edited Private Advice
  • ATO Interpretative Decisions
  • Public Rulings & Determinations
  • Practical Compliance Guidelines
  • Taxpayer Alerts
  • Decision Impact Statements
  • Law Administration Practice Statements
  • Legislative Instruments
  • Advice under Development
• Moved: the legislation datasets
• Use Cases
• Limitations
• Support the Project
• Source & Licensing
• Citation
• Terms of Service

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Dataset Splits

Document counts are from the completeness audit of 29 July 2026, which verified every split against the live ATO Legal Database tree with zero gaps. They grow as the ATO publishes.

Split	Document Type	Documents	Coverage	CSV file	NDJSON file
edited_private_advice	Edited Private Advice (EPA) — all years in one file	57,528	2011–present	edited_private_advice_all.csv	edited_private_advice_all.jsonl
public_rulings	Public Rulings & Determinations (TR, TD, GSTR, GSTD, CR, PR, MT, LCR…)	5,641	All years	public_all.csv	public_all.jsonl
ato_interpretative_decisions	ATO Interpretative Decisions (ATO ID)	2,312	All years	ato_interpretative_decisions.csv	ato_interpretative_decisions.jsonl
legislative_instruments	Legislative Instruments (OPS) — instruments, determinations, and notices made under tax legislation	979	All years	legislative_instruments_all.csv	legislative_instruments_all.jsonl
decision_impact_statements	Decision Impact Statements (DIS) — ATO's response to court rulings	559	2006–present	decision_impact_statements_all.csv	decision_impact_statements_all.jsonl
law_admin_practice_statements	Law Administration Practice Statements (PS LA)	164	All years	law_admin_practice_statements_all.csv	law_admin_practice_statements_all.jsonl
taxpayer_alerts	Taxpayer Alerts (TA) — ATO's early-warning watch list	148	2002–present	taxpayer_alerts_all.csv	taxpayer_alerts_all.jsonl
practical_compliance_guidelines	Practical Compliance Guidelines (PCG)	108	All years	practical_compliance_guidelines.csv	practical_compliance_guidelines.jsonl
advice_under_development	Advice under development — the ATO's register of public advice and guidance still being written, one row per advice product	42 products	Current	advice_under_development_all.csv	advice_under_development_all.jsonl

Looking for the legislation itself? The principal Acts and their amendment history moved to their own repo: simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History. See Moved: the legislation datasets.

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Quick Start

Option A — NDJSON via datasets (recommended for ML)

from datasets import load_dataset

# Use a named config — viewer-friendly, strongly typed schema
ds = load_dataset(
    "simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Rulings-and-Guidance",
    "edited_private_advice",
    split="train",
)
print(ds[0])

# Available configs: edited_private_advice · ato_interpretative_decisions · public_rulings
#   practical_compliance_guidelines · taxpayer_alerts · decision_impact_statements
#   law_admin_practice_statements · legislative_instruments · advice_under_development

Option B — NDJSON via pandas

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_json("edited_private_advice_all.jsonl", lines=True)
active = df[df["Is_Archived"] == False]
print(active[["Authorisation_Number", "Subject", "Date_of_Advice"]].head())

Option C — CSV via pandas

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("edited_private_advice_all.csv")
active = df[df["Is_Archived"] == False]
print(active[["Authorisation_Number", "Subject", "Date_of_Advice"]].head())

Multi-value fields (legislative references, ruling periods, related documents) use | as the internal delimiter in both formats:

# Explode pipe-delimited legislative references into one row per provision
provisions = (
    active["Relevant_Legislative_Provisions"]
    .str.split(" | ")
    .explode()
    .str.strip()
    .value_counts()
)
print(provisions.head(10))

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Schema

The column tables below apply to both the CSV and NDJSON variants — every CSV column maps 1:1 to a JSON key of the same name in the corresponding .jsonl file, in the same order.

Encoding conventions

Convention	Detail
Multi-value delimiter	| (space-pipe-space) within a single cell / string field
Empty values	Empty string "" — never NULL, N/A, or JSON null
Booleans	True / False in CSV; same as JSON string values in NDJSON (the scrapers emit them as strings for round-trip parity with the CSV)
Dates	Verbatim as published by the ATO — no normalisation

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1. Edited Private Advice (edited_private_advice)

Private rulings issued to individual taxpayers, anonymised and edited for publication.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Authorisation_Number	string	No	Primary key. ATO-assigned identifier, e.g. 1-2ABCDEF.
Date_of_Advice	string	Yes	Date the private advice was issued, e.g. 1 July 2024. Blank for older documents.
Subject	string	Yes	Single-sentence topic description, e.g. Capital gains tax — main residence exemption.
Ruling	string	Yes	All Q&A pairs concatenated: Q1: [text] | A1: [text] | Q2: [text] | A2: [text].
Ruling_Period	string	Yes	Income years the ruling applies to: Year ending 30 June 20XX | Year ending 30 June 20XX.
Date_Scheme_Commenced	string	Yes	Date the relevant arrangement commenced. Blank when not stated.
Relevant_Facts_and_Circumstances	string	Yes	Full facts section, collapsed to single-space prose.
Relevant_Legislative_Provisions	string	Yes	Act/section references, e.g. ITAA 1997 s104-10 | ITAA 1997 s116-20.
Reasons_for_Decision	string	Yes	Summary plus all sub-headings: Summary: [text] | Detailed Reasoning - [Sub-heading]: [text].
Is_Archived	boolean	No	True if the document carries an archival disclaimer.
Source_URL	string	No	Full URL, e.g. https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=AEA/1-2ABCDEF.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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2. ATO Interpretative Decisions (ato_interpretative_decisions)

Edited summaries of Tax Office internal decisions, released under FOI obligations.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
ATO_ID_Number	string	No	Primary key, e.g. ATO ID 2010/101.
Status	string	Yes	FOI/editorial status note as published.
Title	string	Yes	Short title of the decision.
Issue	string	Yes	The question put to the ATO.
Decision	string	Yes	The ATO's answer.
Facts	string	Yes	Relevant facts and circumstances.
Reasons_for_Decision	string	Yes	Reasoning supporting the decision.
Date_of_Decision	string	Yes	Date the decision was made, e.g. 2010/06/15.
Year_of_Income	string	Yes	Income year to which the decision relates.
Legislative_References	string	Yes	Pipe-separated act/section references.
Related_Public_Rulings_and_Determinations	string	Yes	Related TR/TD/IT references, pipe-separated.
Related_ATO_Interpretative_Decisions	string	Yes	Related ATO ID numbers, pipe-separated.
Subject_References	string	Yes	ATO subject taxonomy tags, pipe-separated.
Case_References	string	Yes	Court/tribunal cases cited, full citation text preserved.
Other_References	string	Yes	Explanatory memoranda, dictionaries and other external citations.
Business_Line	string	Yes	ATO business line that issued the decision.
Is_Archived	boolean	No	True if the document is archived/superseded.
Source_URL	string	No	Full URL, e.g. https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=AID/2010/101.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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3. Public Rulings & Determinations (public_rulings)

Binding public rulings (TR, TD, IT, CR, PR) and legislative instruments issued by the Commissioner.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Document_Reference	string	No	Primary key, e.g. TR 2024/1.
Document_Type	string	No	Full type name, e.g. Ruling, Determination.
Document_Type_Code	string	No	Short code: TR, TD, IT, CR, PR, etc.
Title	string	Yes	Full document title.
Status	string	Yes	Final, Draft, Withdrawn.
Date_of_Issue	string	Yes	Publication date, e.g. 1 July 2024.
Date_of_Effect	string	Yes	Date from which the ruling applies.
Date_of_Withdrawal	string	Yes	Withdrawal date, if applicable.
Withdrawal_Notice	string	Yes	Full text of the Withdrawal / Notice of Withdrawal block (what was withdrawn and when); often the only record of the withdrawal date/reason when Date_of_Withdrawal is blank.
What_This_Ruling_Is_About	string	Yes	Scope statement from the document.
Class_of_Entities_or_Scheme	string	Yes	Who or what the ruling applies to.
Ruling	string	Yes	The operative ruling paragraphs.
Examples	string	Yes	Worked examples from the ruling.
Appendix_Explanation	string	Yes	Explanatory appendix text.
Other_Appendices	string	Yes	Any additional appendices.
Previous_Rulings	string	Yes	Documents this ruling replaces, pipe-separated.
Related_Rulings	string	Yes	Related ATO publications, pipe-separated.
Compendium_Reference	string	Yes	Cross-reference to the document's Compendium (Early Commentary) doc, e.g. TR 2021/2EC.
Legislative_References	string	Yes	Act/section references, pipe-separated.
Case_References	string	Yes	Court/tribunal cases cited, pipe-separated.
Subject_References	string	Yes	ATO subject taxonomy tags, pipe-separated.
ATO_References	string	Yes	Internal ATO reference numbers.
Other_References	string	Yes	Explanatory memoranda, dictionaries and external citations (distinct from the ATO file numbers in ATO_References).
Is_Withdrawn	boolean	No	True if the ruling has been withdrawn.
Source_URL	string	No	Full URL, e.g. https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=TR/TR_2024/1.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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4. Practical Compliance Guidelines (practical_compliance_guidelines)

Guidelines explaining how the ATO will administer specific areas of tax law, including safe harbours.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
PCG_Number	string	No	Primary key, e.g. PCG 2020/2.
Document_Type	string	No	Final PCG (published), Draft PCG (formal draft), or Compendium (EC / Early Commentary consultation draft).
Title	string	Yes	Full document title.
Status	string	Yes	Current (default for published PCGs), Draft (draft and EC consultation docs), or Withdrawn.
Date_of_Issue	string	Yes	Publication date.
Date_of_Effect	string	Yes	Date from which the guideline applies.
Date_of_Withdrawal	string	Yes	Withdrawal date, if applicable.
Replaces	string	Yes	Predecessor document(s), e.g. PS LA 2011/18.
Related_Rulings_and_Determinations	string	Yes	Related ATO publications, pipe-separated.
Legislative_References	string	Yes	Act/section references, pipe-separated.
Other_References	string	Yes	Explanatory memoranda, dictionaries and external citations.
Summary	string	Yes	One-paragraph executive summary.
Purpose_and_Scope	string	Yes	Who the guideline applies to and why.
Background	string	Yes	Context and policy history.
Compliance_Approach	string	Yes	The ATO's stated enforcement stance, including safe harbour thresholds.
Examples	string	Yes	Worked examples from the document.
Appendices	string	Yes	Appendix content.
Other_Sections	string	Yes	Any additional named sections.
Compendium_Reference	string	Yes	Reference to associated ruling compendium, if any.
Is_Archived	boolean	No	True if the document is archived.
Is_Draft	boolean	No	True for Draft PCG and Compendium (EC / Early Commentary) docs; False for finalized PCGs.
Source_URL	string	No	Full URL, e.g. https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=PCG/PCG_2020/2.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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5. Taxpayer Alerts (taxpayer_alerts)

The ATO's early-warning notices about tax avoidance schemes currently under review. High practitioner value: warns clients away from flagged arrangements before audit action begins.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Alert_Number	string	No	Primary key, e.g. TA 2026/1.
Title	string	Yes	Full descriptive title of the alert.
Date_of_Issue	string	Yes	Date issued, e.g. 14 January 2026. Blank when not stated.
Status	string	Yes	Current or Withdrawn.
Overview	string	Yes	Opening paragraphs describing the scheme, joined with |.
Description	string	Yes	Detailed description of the arrangement.
Example	string	Yes	Illustrative example, if included.
Our_Concerns	string	Yes	The ATO's specific legal concerns.
What_ATO_Is_Doing	string	Yes	Current ATO investigation or action status.
What_You_Should_Do	string	Yes	Practitioner guidance on how to respond.
Related_Documents	string	Yes	Pipe-separated document and legislative references from inline links.
Is_Withdrawn	boolean	No	True if the alert has been withdrawn.
Source_URL	string	No	Full document URL.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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6. Decision Impact Statements (decision_impact_statements)

The ATO's official response to court and tribunal decisions — whether it accepts the outcome, is appealing, or will update its public guidance. Critical for practitioners: a favourable court ruling means nothing if the ATO is going to the High Court.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Case_Name	string	No	Full case citation, e.g. Commissioner of Taxation v Bendel [2025] FCAFC 15.
Venue_Reference_No	string	Yes	Court file number, e.g. VID 903 of 2023.
Venue	string	Yes	Court or tribunal, e.g. Full Federal Court.
Judgment_Date	string	Yes	Date of judgment, e.g. 19 February 2025.
Date_Published	string	Yes	Date the DIS was published by the ATO.
Document_Type	string	No	Decision Impact Statement or Interim Decision Impact Statement.
Decision_Outcome	string	Yes	Court/tribunal result from the "Decision Outcome" section, e.g. Adverse Full Federal Court decision.
Summary_of_Decision	string	Yes	ATO's summary of what the court decided.
Overview_of_Facts	string	Yes	Factual background to the case.
Issues_Decided	string	Yes	Issues concatenated: Issue 1 – [topic]: [text] | Issue 2 – [topic]: [text].
ATO_View_of_Decision	string	Yes	The critical field — ATO's acceptance, appeal status, and guidance implications.
Administrative_Treatment	string	Yes	How the ATO will handle pending cases and objections.
Related_Documents	string	Yes	Pipe-separated document and legislative references.
Legislative_References	string	Yes	Legislative-references block (Acts plus section numbers, full text).
Case_References	string	Yes	Case-references block — full case citations including case-name text.
Subject_References	string	Yes	ATO subject-keyword taxonomy (not present in Related_Documents).
Other_References	string	Yes	Explanatory memoranda and external citations (distinct from the linked Related_Documents).
Is_Interim	boolean	No	True if this is an interim statement (appeal pending).
Source_URL	string	No	Full document URL.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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7. Law Administration Practice Statements (law_admin_practice_statements)

Internal ATO instructions to officers on how to apply the law in practice. Not legally binding on taxpayers but widely cited in audit correspondence and objection letters — practitioners use them to predict and contest ATO positions.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Statement_Reference	string	No	Primary key, e.g. PS LA 2026/1.
Title	string	Yes	Subject line of the statement.
Date_of_Issue	string	Yes	Date issued.
Date_of_Effect	string	Yes	Date from which the statement applies.
Document_Type	string	No	Law Administration Practice Statement, Draft Law Administration Practice Statement, or Law Administration Practice Statement (GA).
Has_Compendium	boolean	No	True if a compendium exists for this statement.
Body	string	Yes	All numbered sections concatenated: 1. [Heading]: [text] | 2. [Heading]: [text] | ….
Related_Documents	string	Yes	Pipe-separated document and legislative references from inline links.
Related_Practice_Statements	string	Yes	PS LA → PS LA cross-references from the "Related Practice Statements" block, split out of the mashed Related_Documents.
Legislative_References	string	Yes	References from the Legislative References: block at end of page.
Subject_References	string	Yes	ATO subject-keyword taxonomy from the Subject References block.
Other_References	string	Yes	Explanatory memoranda, charters, dictionaries and external citations.
Is_Draft	boolean	No	True if this is a draft statement.
Is_Withdrawn	boolean	No	True if the statement has been withdrawn.
Source_URL	string	No	Full document URL.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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8. Legislative Instruments (legislative_instruments)

Legislative instruments, determinations, and notices made by the Commissioner under tax and related legislation. Registered on the Federal Register of Legislation (FRLI). Includes current instruments, repealed instruments, and drafts for comment.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Instrument_Reference	string	No	Primary key, e.g. LI 2024/19, ABRS 2021/1. Parsed from the document H1.
Title	string	Yes	The instrument's formal name as stated in its "Name" section (e.g. Income Tax Assessment (Effective Life of Depreciating Assets) Amendment Determination 2024). Blank for old unstructured documents (e.g. Payment Summary Notices).
Enabling_Act	string	Yes	The empowering legislation, e.g. Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.
Document_Type	string	No	Legislative Instrument, Determination, Data Standard, Framework, or similar as stated in the document body; inferred from heading pattern when not explicit.
Topic_Category	string	Yes	Folder breadcrumb from the ATO tree, e.g. Current > Income tax > Deductions > Motor vehicle expenses.
Date_of_Issue	string	Yes	Date signed by the Commissioner, e.g. 6 June 2024. Blank for some older instruments.
Signatory	string	Yes	Name and title of the signatory, e.g. Ben Kelly Deputy Commissioner of Taxation.
Registration_Number	string	Yes	FRLI registration number, e.g. F2024L00712. Blank for drafts and some repealed documents.
Registration_Date	string	Yes	Date registered on the FRLI, e.g. 10 June 2024. Blank for drafts and some repealed documents.
Body	string	Yes	All numbered sections concatenated: 1 Name: [text] | 2 Commencement: [text] | …. Falls back to all paragraph text (|-delimited) for unstructured documents with no numbered sections.
Related_Explanatory_Statements	string	Yes	Pipe-separated references to associated explanatory statements or other related documents.
Is_Draft	boolean	No	True for documents under the "Drafts for comment" folder.
Is_Repealed	boolean	No	True for documents under the "Repealed or archived" folder.
Repeal_Replacement_Note	string	Yes	Repeal/replacement relationship sentence(s), e.g. This legislative instrument repeals STP 2018/2 … — the what/by-what the Is_Repealed boolean omits.
Source_URL	string	No	Full document URL. Resume key.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any article text not claimed by the structured fields (new/changed page formats), |-joined. Usually empty.

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9. Advice under Development (advice_under_development)

The ATO's public register of the public advice and guidance it is currently developing — the pipeline behind the other splits. Sourced from the Advice under development program pages rather than the Legal Database. One row per advice product: a single [NNNN] issue often covers several products (draft Determination, final Ruling, Practice Statement) with separate expected completion dates, so Issue_Number is not a primary key — key on Source_URL.

Advice is removed from this split once the document it produces is published to the ATO Legal Database, so it always describes work still in progress.

Column	Type	Nullable	Description
Issue_Number	string	No	The ATO's [NNNN] issue id, e.g. 4253. Shared across the products under one issue, and recycled — an issue can have completed and in-progress products at once.
Issue_Title	string	No	Issue heading, e.g. Payday Super.
Issue_Marker	string	Yes	The ATO's own [new] / [updated] flag on the heading; blank when neither.
Category	string	No	Grouping page: GST, Income tax, Superannuation, International, Capital gains tax, Excise, FBT, Administration, Not-for-profit sector, Trust-specific.
Category_Slug	string	No	URL slug of the grouping page.
Advice_Sequence	string	No	1-based index of this product within its issue.
Advice_Count	string	No	Number of products under the issue.
Advice_Type	string	Yes	Product being developed, e.g. Final Goods and Services Tax Ruling, Draft Practical Compliance Guideline, Addendum to Taxation Ruling, Decision impact statement. Blank for the few issues whose Title block opens with the descriptive title instead.
Advice_Title	string	Yes	Descriptive title the finished document will carry.
Is_Draft_Product	boolean	No	True when the product itself is a draft (as opposed to a final or an addendum).
Purpose	string	Yes	Purpose block, paragraphs and list items |-joined.
Expected_Completion	string	Yes	Expected completion, e.g. July 2026, To be advised.
Comments	string	Yes	Consultation status — which draft published when, and whether the comments period is open or closed.
Contact	string	Yes	Raw contact block as published. Occasionally empty at the source.
Contact_Name	string	Yes	Pipe-separated contact names. Blank where the ATO gives only a shared mailbox.
Contact_Business_Line	string	Yes	Pipe-separated ATO business lines, aligned with Contact_Name.
Contact_Phone	string	Yes	Pipe-separated phone numbers.
Contact_Email	string	Yes	Pipe-separated email addresses.
Referenced_Documents	string	Yes	Legal Database references named by the product, e.g. GSTR 2026/D1 | GSTR 2017/1. Joins to Document_Reference / PCG_Number / Statement_Reference in the other splits. Usually a document reference; occasionally the ATO's descriptive link label (e.g. Decision impact statement), in which case Referenced_Document_IDs is the machine-usable value.
Referenced_Document_IDs	string	Yes	Matching ATO docids, e.g. DGS/GSTR2026D1/NAT/ATO/00001.
Referenced_Document_URLs	string	Yes	Matching Legal Database URLs.
Related_Links	string	Yes	Non-Legal-Database links (consultation pages, web guidance).
Development_Status	string	No	Always Under development — published advice is filtered out.
Page_Last_Updated	string	Yes	ISO timestamp the grouping page was last modified.
Source_URL	string	No	Grouping page URL plus the issue anchor (and -<n> for multi-product issues). Primary key.
Unmatched_Content	string	Yes	Fallback capture: any block not claimed by the structured fields, |-joined. Usually empty.

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Moved: the legislation datasets

The three legislation splits that used to live in this repo — frl_principal_legislation, frl_legislation_history and frl_legislation_with_history — are now published on their own at simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History.

They were separated because they come from a different source under a different licence: ATO Legal Database content is © Commonwealth of Australia under CC BY 3.0 Australia, while the Federal Register of Legislation is CC BY 4.0 and carries its own mandatory attribution wording. A single repo can only declare one license:, so publishing them together mis-stated the legislation half.

The data, schema and column names are unchanged — only the repo and the config names:

Was	Now
load_dataset("simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Law-Dataset", "frl_principal_legislation")	load_dataset("simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History", "principal_legislation")
load_dataset("simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Law-Dataset", "frl_legislation_history")	load_dataset("simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History", "amendment_history")
load_dataset("simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Law-Dataset", "frl_legislation_with_history")	load_dataset("simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History", "legislation_with_history")

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Use Cases

• Fine-tuning tax LLMs — 67,000+ structured Australian tax law documents with rich reasoning fields (Reasons_for_Decision, ATO_View_of_Decision) make ready-made supervised fine-tuning examples for legal and tax domain LLMs; ideal training data for ITAA 1997 and GST Act specialists
• Legal RAG pipelines — each row is a self-contained retrieval unit; chunk on Ruling, Reasons_for_Decision, or Compliance_Approach for high-precision retrieval over Australian tax law; compatible with any vector store or RAG framework
• Tax research automation — query and filter across all ATO document types by Document_Type_Code, Is_Withdrawn, and Date_of_Issue to track policy evolution or surface current binding obligations automatically
• Legal NLP — classification, summarisation, and named-entity recognition on Australian tax law; well-suited to legal-NLP, domain-specific NLP research, and text-retrieval benchmarking
• Legislative graph construction — explode Legislative_References to build provision co-citation networks across ITAA 1997, ITAA 1936, GST Act, and more
• Compliance tooling — filter on Document_Type_Code + Is_Withdrawn == False to surface current binding obligations; combine with ATO_View_of_Decision in DIS records to identify contested positions
• Grounded answers over statute and guidance together — join Relevant_Legislative_Provisions here to Provision_Key in the legislation dataset so a generated answer can cite the ATO's interpretation and the provision text it interprets, with the amendment history behind it

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Limitations

• Currency — the ATO Legal Database is checked for new documents every weekday at 11 am AEST; datasets are updated automatically when new documents are detected. ATO documents may still be updated, withdrawn, or replaced between checks. Always verify against the ATO Legal Database for official or time-sensitive purposes.
• Coverage gaps — Edited Private Advice coverage begins in 2011; earlier private advice is not available on the ATO Legal Database. GST Industry Issues (GII) documents are excluded — they lack standard article structure and do not map cleanly to the schema.
• Parsing fidelity — content is extracted from HTML; some older documents (pre-2010) use non-standard markup that may produce blank or truncated fields. Complex tables, diagrams, and attached PDF appendices are not captured.
• Field sparsity — many optional fields (e.g. Date_of_Withdrawal, Date_Scheme_Commenced) are blank for the majority of records, reflecting source documents that simply do not include those details.
• Boolean encoding — Is_Archived, Is_Withdrawn, Is_Draft, and similar flags are stored as the strings "True" / "False" in both CSV and NDJSON for round-trip parity; cast explicitly if your pipeline expects native booleans.
• Australian jurisdiction only — all documents are issued by the Australian Taxation Office and relate exclusively to Australian tax law (ITAA 1997, ITAA 1936, GST Act, and related legislation). This dataset is not suitable as a general-purpose legal corpus for other jurisdictions.
• Not legal advice — this dataset reproduces publicly available ATO materials for informational and research purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional legal or tax advice.

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Support the Project

This dataset is free. If it saves you time on data engineering, a coffee is appreciated:

☕ Buy Me a Coffee

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Source & Licensing

Source: the ATO Legal Database (ato.gov.au), © Commonwealth of Australia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence.

The licence permits commercial use, redistribution and adaptation with attribution. This structured compilation is published by SimpleLex under the same Creative Commons terms.

Legislation sourced from the Federal Register of Legislation is published in the companion repo under CC BY 4.0, with the FRL's own required attribution wording — it is licensed differently from the ATO content here, which is why the two are separate datasets.

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Citation

@dataset{simplelex_ato_rulings_2026,
  author    = {SimpleLex},
  title     = {ATO Rulings \& Guidance — Australian Tax Law, Structured for AI},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url       = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Rulings-and-Guidance}
}

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Terms of Service

Last updated: July 2026

What this product is

A structured dataset of publicly available legal documents published by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) at ato.gov.au. Documents include Edited Private Advice, Public Rulings, Determinations, ATO Interpretive Decisions, Practical Compliance Guidelines, Taxpayer Alerts, Decision Impact Statements, Law Administration Practice Statements, legislative instruments, and the ATO's register of advice still under development. All datasets are compiled into machine-readable CSV and NDJSON format.

The principal Acts the ATO administers, with reconstructed amendment-history notes sourced from the Federal Register of Legislation, are published as a separate dataset under its own licence and terms.

Permitted use

You may use this dataset for any lawful purpose, including research, analysis, building applications, and commercial projects. You do not need to ask permission. Attribution is appreciated but not required for the compilation itself.

Source material and copyright

The underlying ATO documents are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence. The Commonwealth retains copyright in the original materials. This dataset is a structured compilation and does not claim copyright in the original source material.

Not legal or tax advice

Nothing in this dataset constitutes legal or tax advice. Documents are reproductions of publicly available ATO materials provided for informational purposes only. Always consult a registered tax agent or legal professional for advice about your specific situation.

Accuracy and currency

We make no warranties about the completeness, accuracy, or currency of the data. ATO documents may be updated, withdrawn, or replaced after the dataset was last scraped. Always verify against the ATO Legal Database for official or time-sensitive purposes.

No liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Australian law, simplelex accepts no liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss arising from use of or reliance on this dataset.

Changes

We may update these terms at any time. Continued use of the dataset following an update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.