Ato MCP Server

Australian tax knowledge base: cited retrieval over ATO guidance, the ITAA & GST Acts, and rulings.

Remote serverstreamable-http

What is the Ato MCP server?

Most developer tooling work still happens through a UI a human drives. Ato MCP server moves it into the conversation instead. Australian tax knowledge base: cited retrieval over ATO guidance, the ITAA & GST Acts, and rulings.

The short version

Connect your AI agent to 34,500+ ATO documents (guidance, legislation, and public rulings) and get cited answers to the tax questions you'd otherwise pay your accountant to answer.

Getting it running

Because this one is hosted, setup is mostly authentication — you point your client at the endpoint and approve access. Nothing runs on your machine, so there is no runtime to keep patched.

The tools it exposes

The server publishes 4 tools. What each one is for:

  • deduction_discovery — Surfaces every deduction category that plausibly applies to your profile: a curated, cited taxonomy branched across sole traders, companies
  • depreciation_helper — Deterministic prime-cost / diminishing-value / instant-write-off / small-business-pool / Div 43 schedules for any asset, with the live IAWO threshold
  • bas_prep_checklist — A tiered, cited BAS checklist for your reporting period: which labels apply, what evidence to gather, the gotchas
  • audit_risk_check — Flags the patterns the ATO scrutinises in a draft return (WRE vs income, rental anomalies, unreported crypto, …) with risk bands and the guidance

Things to watch

  • Your data travels to the provider's service, so the usual questions apply about what you send and what they retain.
  • Keep per-call confirmation enabled while you learn its behaviour; it is the cheapest safeguard you have.

How it compares

Among the developer tooling options, the useful question is rarely "what can it do" but "what does it cost you to run" — permissions, credentials, and how much of your context its toolset consumes. Ato's toolset — deduction_discovery, depreciation_helper, bas_prep_checklist and 1 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by au.com.ato-mcp; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.

This entry was verified against Ato's own documentation before publication; SyncDev keeps the directory reviewed rather than auto-generated.

Available tools

ToolWhat it does
deduction_discoverySurfaces **every deduction category** that plausibly applies to your profile: a curated, cited taxonomy branched across sole traders, companies, trusts, partnerships, investors and SMSF members
depreciation_helperDeterministic prime-cost / diminishing-value / instant-write-off / small-business-pool / Div 43 schedules for any asset, with the live IAWO threshold
bas_prep_checklistA tiered, cited BAS checklist for your reporting period: which labels apply, what evidence to gather, the gotchas
audit_risk_checkFlags the patterns the ATO scrutinises in a draft return (WRE vs income, rental anomalies, unreported crypto, …) with risk bands and the guidance behind each flag

How to install the Ato MCP server

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ato": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "ato-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.

Example prompts to try

  • Use Ato to deduction discovery.
  • Use Ato to depreciation helper.
  • Use Ato to bas prep checklist.

Frequently asked questions

It connects Ato to MCP-compatible AI assistants such as Claude and Cursor, exposing 4 tools (deduction_discovery, depreciation_helper, bas_prep_checklist, and more) that the assistant can call on your behalf. Instead of copying data back and forth by hand, the assistant works with Ato directly.