Accountants and
AI search.

The questions come in two kinds. Tax questions: 'can I claim my ute', 'do I need to register for GST', 'sole trader or company for a cafe in Penrith'. And hiring questions: 'do I need an accountant for my small business', 'accountant for tradies on the Central Coast', 'how much does a bookkeeper cost'.

The National AI Centre's own tax-time advice says AI can help people get organised. It also says to keep a person in charge of every figure you lodge, and that more complex situations call for a registered tax agent. That moment, when someone realises their question is bigger than a chatbot, is when a firm wants to be the name that comes up.

In April 2026 the ATO included AI in its tax-time warnings. Assistant Commissioner Anita Challen said AI answers can rely on sources from outside Australia or that are out of date. She added that taxpayers remain accountable for what they lodge, even if AI tools were used in preparing it.

For a firm, that means two things. It's a reason people will pay for a person who checks. And it sets the bar for your own content: if your page on a deduction is three income years old and undated, you're one of the outdated sources the ATO is worried about.

Behind 'do I need an accountant for my Airbnb', an AI tool is likely to look up several things. How short-stay income is treated, what records are needed, what an accountant costs, and who nearby works with property owners. Google's guide calls this query fan-out, related queries generated by the model and run at the same time. ChatGPT does something similar, rewriting a question into targeted queries before it cites sources.

The ATO will win the rule searches, and it should. A firm can win the rest: what a rule means for a particular kind of client, what the work involves, what it costs and who to call. The SEO for accountants page sorts which topics are worth writing.

Google's guidance says its systems give even more weight to experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust on topics that could significantly affect people's financial stability, and that trust matters most. Google calls these 'Your Money or Your Life' topics. Tax is squarely one. A page with no author, no date and no sources is easy to pass over, by a careful reader or by a system choosing what to cite.

So a tax page should show who wrote or checked it, with their registration. It should give the income year it covers and when it was last checked, with a link to the ATO for each rule, and a line saying it's general information and when to get advice. That last line isn't legal cover. It's the honest answer to the question every reader has: does this apply to me?

The TPB register is public. For each practitioner it shows the registration name, ASIC business name, registration type, number, status, any conditions and any sanctions, and people can search by name, number or within 75 km of an address. It's exactly the kind of official fact a careful buyer, or an AI answer, can check you against.

So make your site match it. Use the same business name, show the registration number and link to your entry. Registered agents already have to tell prospective clients how to search the register, and the advertising rules page has a block for it. If your entry lists a condition that limits your services, check your service pages don't promise more.

Paste the text of one of your tax-question pages and tick what it shows. It flags promises and advice-shaped wording, looks for an income year, and lists what to fix first. It checks the marketing, not the tax.

If your team uses AI to draft content or client work, the TPB's guidance statement of 22 July 2026 applies. It says practitioners are still ultimately responsible for the tax agent services they provide, and should check AI output for accuracy at each step. They also need a client's permission before passing their information to a third party, which can include an AI tool.

The statement doesn't cover marketing. The same habit protects your website anyway: a registered person checks every AI-drafted tax page before it goes live, and the page names them.