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Tax Strategy
What the tax page reads and for whom, how its review items are generated and sorted into buckets, what the three review modes and their windows mean, and which figures it does not compute.
Updated 4 September 2026
What this screen is for
The Tax Strategy page is a review board, not a tax calculator. It shows the tax signals the fact-find already holds (entities, carried-forward losses, franking balances, Division 7A loans, super death benefit exposure), the review items the rules engine produced from those signals, and the evidence still missing before each item can move. Nothing on the page is a tax computation.
The page makes three calls: the client list when it opens, one dashboard read when you pick a client, and the rules engine when you press Run rules.
Whose figures these are
Read the note under the heading before anything else. The household tax context (accountant details, major events, planned sales) is one record per household. Everything else is the selected client’s: their business entities, their super death benefit exposure, and the tax items the engine wrote for them. A couple whose entities were recorded against one member shows an empty By Entity section when the other member is selected, and the Entities tile says so. Switch client to see the rest.
A household-wide version of the same read exists on the server, but this page does not call it.
Where the data is entered
| What the page reads | Where it is entered |
|---|---|
| Accountant name, firm, email and phone; whether the latest returns are available; major tax events in the past 24 months; planned asset sales; tax review notes | Fact-find, Tax section, the household tax context card |
| Likely tax dependant and non-tax dependant beneficiaries; expected super death benefit pathway; taxable, tax-free and untaxed component estimates | Fact-find, Tax section, the per-client card. When a component estimate is blank, the page sums the components recorded on the client’s super accounts instead |
| Binding death benefit nomination | Fact-find, Estate section, the binding nomination field for each client |
| Per entity: retained earnings, franking account balance, revenue and capital losses carried forward, tax return available, Division 7A exposure and repayment status, bucket company relationship, family trust election status, unpaid present entitlements | Fact-find, Entities section, one card per entity. The older Business section writes the same fields for a business entered there |
Text answers of “unknown”, “not considered”, “n/a”, “na” or “needs review” count as blank. The pathway option “Not considered” therefore reads as no pathway recorded.
Run rules
Until the engine has run for this client, the line beside the client selector reads “Tax profile only”, a banner says nothing has been persisted yet, and the four item panels are empty. Run rules starts the same engine run as the Advice page: it needs at least one scope classification for the client, refreshes recommendations that already exist in place, and rewrites the explanation rows this page reads. “Rules run” shows the newest run stamp among the client’s tax rows.
The six review items
The engine’s tax layer evaluates six review items for the client from the flags below. When the client has no tax triggers and no missing tax data, none are produced.
| Item | Produced when | Blocked (Missing Data) when | Otherwise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Death Benefit Tax Leakage Review | a client’s super profile shows potential leakage (non-tax dependant beneficiaries named, and a taxable or untaxed component above zero), a pathway risk (a super balance, non-tax dependants named, no pathway), or missing data | with a super balance: no nomination recorded, neither beneficiary field filled, or no pathway; or non-tax dependants named with no component estimate | Needs Review |
| Trust Distribution and Section 100A Review | a trust has a bucket company relationship, unpaid present entitlements, or an unclear family trust or interposed entity election | tax return availability unanswered, or a bucket company relationship with no return available | Needs Review |
| Bucket Company Review | any entity names a bucket company relationship | return evidence missing, as above | Deferred while the trust distribution item is blocked; otherwise Needs Review |
| Division 7A Review | an entity has Division 7A exposure | repayment status blank | Needs Review |
| Family Trust Election Review | a trust’s family trust or interposed entity election status is unclear | return evidence missing | Needs Review |
| Loss Utilisation Review | an entity carries revenue or capital losses | return evidence missing | Deferred while a trust with losses has an unclear election; otherwise Recommended |
Only the loss item can reach Opportunities. The other five are review gates whose best outcome is Needs Review, because each needs an accountant’s judgement before it becomes advice.
Two household-level gaps also feed the data queue: Household Tax Context, when the client has entities but the household tax card is empty, and Latest Returns Available, when that question is unanswered.
Four more tax strategies come from the general strategy registry rather than this layer: EOFY prepayment of deductible expenses, depreciation schedule review, capital gains tax planning and income splitting between spouses. Each has its own eligibility test (deductible debt or rental income with a marginal rate of at least 30 per cent; property or business assets; assets outside super or rental income; a partner whose marginal rate differs by five percentage points or more). When the engine produces one it is written under the tax advice area and appears here in the same buckets, with “Monitor” as its cadence.
Buckets, urgency and next action
Items are split by status. Recommended items show as Opportunities, then Needs Review, Missing Data (kicker Blocked) and Deferred. Outside-scope and rejected items are in the payload, but the page has no panel for them, so they do not appear.
The urgency pill comes from the item’s priority score: 70 and above is Urgent, 55 to 69 is Active, below 55 is Watchlist. With the scores the tax layer assigns, a super death benefit or Division 7A item is Urgent whether blocked or not, the trust distribution review is Urgent once unblocked and Active while blocked, and the bucket company, election and loss items sit at Active.
Each card also carries a category, an owner (joint adviser and accountant for the super death benefit and trust distribution items, accountant-led for the other four), a trigger event label, a next action worded for its status, and an Evidence Needed list made of the item’s standing evidence plus a document for every blocked field.
The summary tiles and the status line
The six tiles are Opportunities, Needs Review, Blocked, EOFY Due, Event Triggered and Entities. The Entities tile says the accountant context is recorded when any of the four accountant fields has text, and names the other household member as a place to look when the count is zero. The status line at the top reads “run rules” until a plan exists, then reports blocked items first, items needing review second, and “Tax evidence current” when neither applies.
Review modes
Three mode cards sit under the tiles. Each of the six review items belongs to one or two modes; the four registry strategies belong to none and read “General tax review”.
| Item | Cadence | Modes |
|---|---|---|
| Super death benefit | Event-driven | Death / incapacity |
| Trust distribution, bucket company, Division 7A | Annual | EOFY |
| Loss utilisation, family trust election | Annual + event-driven | EOFY and Business exit |
The EOFY card counts days to the next 30 June, which is the end of the financial year that runs from 1 July. With at least one EOFY item it reads Action now inside 90 days, Prepare now inside 180, and Monitor beyond that. With no EOFY items it is Inactive.
The Death / incapacity and Business exit cards read Triggered when their signal is present and they have items, Monitor when they have items but no signal, and Inactive otherwise. The signals are keyword scans over free text. Death / incapacity fires when the household’s major events or review notes, or any client’s pathway, tax strategy notes or non-tax dependant beneficiaries, contain death, deceased, estate, terminal, incapacity, incapacitated, power of attorney, poa or health event, and also whenever a client has super death benefit tax risk. Business exit fires when major events, planned sales, review notes, or any entity’s current phase or notes contain exit, sale, sell, succession, retire, retirement, wind up, wind-up, mbo, management buyout, capital raise or heads of agreement, and also whenever the planned asset sales field has any text. The match is on the characters, not the word, so “real estate” trips the first and “for sale” the second.
An item’s primary mode is whichever of its modes is furthest along (Action now or Triggered, then Prepare now, then Monitor, then Inactive), with ties broken death / incapacity first, business exit second, EOFY last. The item’s Due Window and Cadence cells name that mode. An item is “due now” when its primary mode is Action now or Triggered. The EOFY Due tile counts items in the EOFY mode while that mode is Action now, and the Event Triggered tile counts items in a Triggered event mode; both count only items that are recommended, needing review, blocked or deferred.
Tax Overlay cards
Up to four kinds of card: one Super death benefit leakage risk card per client whose profile shows leakage or a pathway risk, with the taxable plus untaxed estimate as its figure; an Entity extraction pressure card counting entities with a bucket company or Division 7A flag; a Losses available to deploy card summing revenue and capital losses across the client’s entities; and an Upcoming trigger events card counting the major events and planned sales fields that have text. When none applies, a single card reads “Tax layer ready for review”.
Show working on the losses card opens the trace of which entity rows were summed. The button appears only when calculation traces are switched on for the deployment, which they are unless an operator has disabled them.
Dollar figures on these cards are rounded for reading: $1.2m, $250k, and “Not recorded” for zero.
Trigger map and data queue
The Trigger Map groups items by their trigger event label, listing up to four titles per group, and adds a card each for recorded major events and planned asset sales that shows the text as typed in the fact-find. Groups are ordered by count.
The Data Queue holds one card per missing field, with a label, a hint and the document to collect. It reads “N blocked strategies” when items are held on that field and “Coverage uplift” when none is, and sorts by blocked count, then label.
By Entity
One card per entity of the selected client. An entity reads Attention when it carries a Division 7A, election or trust distribution flag or has missing data, and Stable otherwise. The two counts are opportunity flags (losses, bucket company, franking credits, company extraction) and risk flags (Division 7A, elections, trust distribution). Position lines show retained earnings, franking balance and Division 7A exposure for a company, and losses and entitlements for a trust. Linked items are matched to the entity by its record, so two entities with the same name stay apart. Documents still needed lists the document for each of the entity’s missing fields.
In the advice document
The Statement of Advice’s tax strategy summary is built from the same items, when tax planning is In scope for the client. Considered only means excluded from advice, so it gets no tax summary — the Scope section records that the area was considered. Outside-scope and rejected items are left out. An item needing review carries the assumption “Final tax treatment remains subject to accountant or specialist review” unless it already lists blocked fields, and its timeframe reads Now for Urgent, This advice cycle for Active, and Monitor / next review otherwise.
What this page does not do
- Compute income tax. The personal tax estimate shown on the fact-find and in the client book comes from a fixed table of 2025-26 resident brackets that leaves out the Medicare levy, offsets and study loans, and it does not read the dated set of official figures that the rest of the engine uses. The brackets stay fixed for that year until the table is changed.
- Read that set of official figures for the financial year. The year label and the 30 June date on the EOFY card come from today’s date.
- Respect the scope classification for its six items. They are produced whether tax planning is In scope, Excluded or unclassified; the Advice page and the advice document do respect it. See the Scope of Advice guide.
- Show the whole household at once, or show outside-scope and rejected items.
- Change between runs. Items persist as they were written until the next Run rules.