Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

ato 0.1.1

Bug-fix release. Version 0.1.0 could not reach the current ATO release, and several functions returned the wrong table without saying so. Everything below is a fix; no user-facing arguments changed except where noted.

Data currency

• The ATO published Taxation Statistics 2023-24 in June 2026. year = "latest" now resolves to it. Documentation that named 2022-23 as the newest release has been updated, and the “latest” wording no longer hardcodes a year.

Resolution fixes

• ato_ckan_search() joined the organisation filter and the query terms with a +, which URLencode(reserved = TRUE) escaped to %2B. Solr read that as a literal character, so every filtered catalogue search returned zero results. This broke year = "latest", the default argument on 27 exported functions, for every one of them. The terms are now joined with a space.

• ato_fetch_xlsx() read sheet 1 of each workbook. Nearly every ATO workbook opens with a “Notes” or “Information” sheet and puts the table on the second, so most functions returned front matter rather than data. Front-matter sheets are now detected by name and skipped. ato_individuals() returns 846 rows instead of 17; ato_individuals_occupation() 3,771 instead of 16; ato_tax_gaps() 1,187 instead of 16.

• ato_ckan_resolve() returned the first resource matching a single regex, in package order. The Snapshot workbooks sit at positions 2 to 8 of a Taxation Statistics package and their filenames contain “postcode” and “occupation”, so they shadowed the detailed Individuals tables at positions 20 to 47. It now accepts a priority vector of patterns plus an exclude regex. Affected functions and the tables they were returning:

  Function	Was	Now
  ato_individuals()	Snapshot 1 (historical tax rates)	Individuals 1
  ato_individuals_postcode()	Snapshot 7 (49 rows)	Individuals 6 (5,254 rows)
  ato_individuals_occupation()	Snapshot 7	Individuals 14
  ato_individuals_sex()	Individuals 2 (matched “…methodsex…”)	Individuals 3
  ato_individuals_state()	Snapshot 7	Individuals 4
  ato_medicare_levy()	Individuals 1 (no Medicare columns)	Individuals 3

Column matching

• ato_find_col() matched column names exactly, so ATO footnote markers defeated it: the postcode table’s state column is state_territory1, not state_territory. Filters therefore did nothing and returned unfiltered data with only a warning. Matching now also accepts a trailing footnote digit (broad_industry2) and the variant as a leading token (occupation_unit_group1). ato_individuals_postcode(state = "NSW") returns 1,250 rows rather than all 5,254.

• Column lookups now happen only when a filter is actually requested, and a requested filter that cannot be applied warns that the data is being returned unfiltered rather than reporting a missing column and continuing quietly.

Datasets that moved

• ato_fbt(), ato_payg() and ato_charities() searched for standalone packages that have never existed on data.gov.au. All three are table families inside Taxation Statistics and now resolve there.

• ato_fuel_tax_credits(by = "industry") looked in the Excise Data package, which has never carried the industry table. It now reads Excise Table 4 of Taxation Statistics. by = "fuel" and by = "period" read the historical FTC rate schedule from Excise Data.

• ato_vttc() looked for a resource named after the year. The ATO has replaced the per-year workbooks with a single dated notifications register covering all signatories and years, which is now returned, with a message when a requested year cannot be honoured.

Functions that never had a data source

These aborted or returned an unrelated table. They now abort with an accurate explanation and a pointer to the real source, and are candidates for removal in a later release.

• ato_whm(): no Working Holiday Maker resource exists in any ATO package on data.gov.au, current or archived.
• ato_division293(): Division 293 is not published as a labelled series. 0.1.0 fell back to Individuals Table 3 and titled the result “ATO Division 293”.
• ato_compliance(): the ATO annual report is a PDF on ato.gov.au, not open data.

Back catalogue

• The front-matter sheet test matched the whole sheet name, so it caught “Notes” (28 workbooks) but not “Title & notes” (6) or “Individuals Tax Title & Notes” (2). Every release up to 2015-16 was therefore still parsing its title page instead of the data. Now matched as whole words anywhere in the name, which leaves genuine data sheets alone (the pre-2010 GST workbooks open on a sheet named for the income year, e.g. “2000-01”). ato_individuals_postcode(year = "2011-12") returns 5,067 rows instead of 14.

• ato_super_funds() matched fund0[1-4] only. Releases up to 2012-13 used a single unpadded digit (taxstats2012fund1apraselecteditemsbyyear.xls), so those two years errored. Both now return ~200 rows.

• Net effect: all six core series now resolve across every release from 2011-12 to 2023-24, verified year by year.

Corporate Tax Transparency

• ato_top_taxpayers() ignored its year argument when reading the workbook. Each CTT release carries late amendments for earlier income years alongside the headline year, so the 2023-24 request returned 4,198 rows spanning 2023-24, 2022-23 and 2021-22. It now filters on income_year and returns the 4,110 rows the ATO published for 2023-24, reporting how many amendment rows were dropped.

DESCRIPTION

• The package Description advertised Division 293, compliance, and Working Holiday Maker aggregates. Those are exactly the three series with no data source behind them, and they now abort. Removed from the Description, which had been promising data the package cannot supply.

Metadata and links

• Language in DESCRIPTION was en-US while the prose is British English throughout. Set to en-GB, which clears 53 spurious spell-check hits (behaviour, catalogue, harmonisation, licence, modelling, organisation and similar). inst/WORDLIST refreshed against the remaining acronyms, surnames and package names; spelling::spell_check_package() is now clean.

• ato_international() cited oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/revenue-statistics.htm, which OECD has since deleted (HTTP 410). Repointed at Revenue Statistics 2025. The 410 was invisible to automated URL checking because oecd.org returns 403 to every request from a non-browser client, valid path or not.

README

• Every code example is now executed against live data before release. The postcode example referenced number_of_individuals and taxable_income_average, neither of which exists in Individuals Table 6, so it could never have run; it now uses the real columns and derives the mean.
• Dataset count corrected from 42 to 43.
• Coverage corrected from “1994-95 - present” to “2011-12 - present”. The 2009-10 and 2010-11 packages ship only a PDF, an index and a ZIP, and 1994-95 to 2008-09 is a separate legacy bundle, so the detailed-table functions cannot reach any of them.

Tests

• Added test-resolution.R. Most of it is offline: query encoding, resource-resolution priority and exclusion against a mocked package, and column matching. One live test asserts that year = "latest" resolves to a well-formed, current release slug. It is deliberately not behind ATO_LIVE_TESTS, because every existing live test pinned an explicit year and sat behind that opt-in gate, which is why none of them noticed that the default argument was broken.

ato 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2026-04-28

Initial CRAN submission. First public release. Provides R access to Australian Taxation Office public datasets via the data.gov.au Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) API, with reproducibility, harmonisation, and interop tooling.

Data-access functions

Discovery

• ato_catalog(): list all ATO datasets on data.gov.au with their resources, licences, and modification dates.
• ato_download(): generic resource downloader with local cache.

Individuals

• ato_individuals(): Taxation Statistics Individual snapshot (Table 1).
• ato_individuals_postcode(): individual tax return items by postcode and state (Individuals Table 6). Accepts a vector of years (e.g. year = 2018:2022) and returns a stacked panel with a year column.
• ato_individuals_occupation(): individual tax return items by occupation (ANZSCO), sex, and income range.
• ato_individuals_age(), ato_individuals_sex(), ato_individuals_state(): demographic cuts.

Companies and superannuation

• ato_companies(): Company Taxation Statistics across all nine Company Tables via table = ...: snapshot, key_items_by_size, entity_type, industry (default), industry_by_size, sub_industry, taxable_status, source, expenses.
• ato_super_funds(): APRA-regulated superannuation fund and Self-Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF) aggregates.

Other entities, transparency, and aggregates

• ato_top_taxpayers(): Corporate Tax Transparency release with sheet switch between income_tax and prrt (Petroleum Resource Rent Tax filers).
• ato_gst(): Goods and Services Tax tables and Activity Statement Ratios.
• ato_industry(): industry-level aggregates derived from Individual and Company tables.

Integrity, incentives, and international

• ato_tax_gaps(): annual Tax Gap estimates across tax heads (individuals, small business, large corporate, GST, excise, PRRT, superannuation guarantee). Treasury cites this series in every MYEFO.
• ato_rdti(): Research and Development Tax Incentive claimants, expenditure, and offset data.
• ato_irpd(): International Related Party Dealings across annual packages from 2019-20 (Table 1 totals, Table 2 by jurisdiction, Table 3 chart-data index). Core BEPS and transfer-pricing dataset.

Excise, small business, and education loans

• ato_excise(): excise rate schedule, Fuel Tax Credit rates, beer clearances, and spirits and other excisable beverages.
• ato_sme_benchmarks(): Small Business Benchmarks (industry-specific cost-to-turnover and related ratios).
• ato_help(): Study and Training Support Loan statistics covering HELP, AASL (Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans), and VSL (VET Student Loans).

Extended coverage

• ato_tax_expenditures(): Treasury Tax Expenditures and Insights Statement (TEIS).
• ato_fuel_tax_credits(): FTC claims and rates.
• ato_division293(): Division 293 additional contributions tax data.
• ato_prrt(): Petroleum Resource Rent Tax aggregates.
• ato_compliance(): ATO compliance activity statistics.
• ato_medicare_levy(): Medicare Levy Surcharge aggregates.
• ato_whm(): Working Holiday Maker tax filings.

Sibling helpers

• ato_state_tax(): ABS 5506.0 state and territory taxation.
• ato_international(): OECD Revenue Statistics.
• ato_rba(): RBA H1 Commonwealth Government Receipts.

Reproducibility spine

• ato_snapshot(): pin a session snapshot date, recorded in every ato_tbl provenance header, manifest entry, and citation.
• ato_sha256(): SHA-256 digest of a file or in-memory object. Cached downloads carry a sidecar hash verified on every cache hit; drift warns with both hash prefixes.
• ato_manifest(), ato_manifest_clear(), ato_manifest_write(): session registry of every fetch (URL, CKAN IDs, SHA-256, size, timestamp, snapshot pin, R and ato versions). Output as data frame, YAML, JSON, or CSV for paper appendices.
• ato_deposit_zenodo(): stage a Zenodo deposit payload for the session manifest. Dry run by default; call with upload = TRUE and a ZENODO_TOKEN to mint a DOI.
• ato_cite(): citation helper producing plain text, BibTeX, or APA output from an ato_tbl or URL, with optional SHA-256 digest, snapshot date, and doi = argument.

Harmonisation and reconciliation

• ato_crosswalk(): bundled classification and reference tables (ANZSIC 2006 to 2020, ANZSCO 2013 to 2021, postcode-state anchors, ABS CPI annual, ABS ERP annual, Final Budget Outcome reference totals).
• ato_harmonise(): rename columns to canonical names across multi-year panels using ATO_COL_VARIANTS.
• ato_reconcile(): compare an aggregate against the published Final Budget Outcome figure for the same year and measure; warns on gaps above 5 per cent.
• ato_deflate(): nominal AUD to real AUD in a base year using bundled ABS CPI.
• ato_per_capita(): divide by ABS ERP.

Microdata bridge

• ato_to_taxstats(): rename columns between ATO aggregate schema and the taxstats 2 per cent microdata sample schema, in either direction.
• ato_schema_map(): return the full column-name mapping.

Utilities

• ato_cache_info(), ato_clear_cache(): cache management.

Data handling

• ATO confidentiality-suppression tokens (np, n.p., *, and others) are coerced to NA by ato_fetch_csv() and ato_fetch_xlsx() so numeric columns stay numeric.
• XLSX header auto-detection: scans up to 15 rows to find the column-header row, handling ATO workbooks that lead with a title, narrative, or Notes sheet.
• Every returned ato_tbl carries provenance attributes (source URL, CC licence, retrieval time, title) exposed via print() and ato_cite().

Vignettes

• Reproducibility workflow (snapshot, manifest, SHA-256, Zenodo deposit).
• Panels, harmonisation, reconciliation, real terms, per capita.
• Interop with grattan and taxstats: costing a hypothetical reform.
• Canonical replications: top 1 per cent income share, corporate ETR by industry, tax gap trend, HELP debt by age cohort.

Data source

Data is published by the Australian Taxation Office on data.gov.au and ato.gov.au. Most Taxation Statistics datasets are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia; Corporate Tax Transparency and the Voluntary Tax Transparency Code are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia. All downloads are cached locally on first use.