--- configs: - config_name: principal_legislation data_files: - split: train path: frl_principal_legislation_all.jsonl - config_name: amendment_history data_files: - split: train path: frl_legislation_history_all.jsonl - config_name: legislation_with_history data_files: - split: train path: frl_legislation_with_history_all.jsonl tags: - law - tax - australia - legislation - statutes - legal - rag - nlp - legal-nlp - amendment-history - legislative-history - itaa1997 - itaa1936 - gst - domain-specific - text-retrieval - question-answering - fine-tuning language: - en license: cc-by-4.0 pretty_name: Australian Tax Legislation & Amendment History — ITAA 1997, ITAA 1936, GST Act size_categories: - 10K **The full text of every section of the 22 principal Acts the Australian Taxation Office administers** — Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, Income Tax Assessment Act 1936, the GST Act, FBTAA, the Taxation Administration Act 1953, the superannuation and fuel tax Acts and more — **each section joined to its complete amendment history**: which Act changed it, which schedule item, and when it commenced. Sourced from the [Federal Register of Legislation](https://www.legislation.gov.au) and structured for legal RAG, statutory retrieval, and LLM fine-tuning. This rebuilds the "see history notes" view that commercial Australian tax services charge for — reconstructed entirely from the **freely licensed, Crown-copyright FRL compilation endnotes**, so it can be published under CC BY 4.0. **Companion dataset:** ATO rulings, private advice, determinations and guidance are published separately at [**simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Rulings-and-Guidance**](https://huggingface.co/datasets/simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Rulings-and-Guidance). The two are designed to be used together — ATO documents cite provisions; this dataset resolves them. --- ## File formats Each dataset is published in two parallel files with identical content and field order: | Format | Filename pattern | Best for | |---|---|---| | **CSV** (UTF-8) | `.csv` | Pandas, spreadsheets, SQL bulk-load | | **NDJSON / JSON Lines** | `.jsonl` | `datasets.load_dataset()`, streaming, jq, DuckDB, RAG ingestion | JSON keys are identical to CSV column names — the schema tables below describe both formats. --- ## Contents - [Dataset Splits](#dataset-splits) - [Quick Start](#quick-start) - [Schema](#schema) - [Principal Legislation](#1-principal-legislation-principal_legislation) - [Amendment History](#2-amendment-history-amendment_history) - [Legislation + History Notes](#3-legislation--history-notes-legislation_with_history) - [Acts Covered](#acts-covered) - [Use Cases](#use-cases) - [Limitations](#limitations) - [Attribution — required wording](#attribution--required-wording) - [Source & Licensing](#source--licensing) - [Citation](#citation) - [Terms of Service](#terms-of-service) --- ## Dataset Splits | Split | Content | Est. Rows | Coverage | CSV file | NDJSON file | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | `principal_legislation` | Current in-force text of every section of the 22 ATO-administered Acts | ~10,000 sections | Latest compilation | `frl_principal_legislation_all.csv` | `frl_principal_legislation_all.jsonl` | | `amendment_history` | One row per amendment event — provision, action, amending Act, commencement | ~43,000 events | 1986–present | `frl_legislation_history_all.csv` | `frl_legislation_history_all.jsonl` | | `legislation_with_history` | **Flagship.** Each current section joined to its chronological amendment history | ~10,000 sections | Current + history | `frl_legislation_with_history_all.csv` | `frl_legislation_with_history_all.jsonl` | --- ## Quick Start ### Option A — NDJSON via `datasets` (recommended for ML) ```python from datasets import load_dataset ds = load_dataset( "simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History", "legislation_with_history", split="train", ) print(ds[0]) # Available configs: principal_legislation · amendment_history · legislation_with_history ``` ### Option B — NDJSON via pandas ```python import pandas as pd df = pd.read_json("frl_legislation_with_history_all.jsonl", lines=True) # What does ITAA 1997 s 6-5 say, and how has it changed? s6_5 = df[(df["Act_Short_Name"] == "ITAA1997") & (df["Provision_Key"] == "s6-5")] print(s6_5[["Heading", "Text", "Amendment_Count", "History_Notes"]].iloc[0]) ``` ### Option C — join provisions to their amendment events yourself ```python import pandas as pd provisions = pd.read_json("frl_principal_legislation_all.jsonl", lines=True) events = pd.read_json("frl_legislation_history_all.jsonl", lines=True) joined = provisions.merge(events, on=["Act_FRL_Id", "Provision_Key"], how="left") # Most-amended sections of the ITAA 1997 top = ( joined[joined["Act_Short_Name_x"] == "ITAA1997"] .groupby(["Provision_x", "Heading"]) .size() .sort_values(ascending=False) ) print(top.head(10)) ``` Multi-value fields (`Amending_Acts`, `History_Notes`) use ` | ` as the internal delimiter in both formats. --- ## 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` | | **Dates** | Verbatim as published by the FRL — no normalisation | | **Defined terms** | `*` prefixes a defined term in provision text (the FRL's own convention, preserved) | --- ### 1. Principal Legislation (`principal_legislation`) Current in-force text of **every section of the 22 principal Acts the ATO administers**. One row per provision. | Column | Type | Nullable | Description | |---|---|---|---| | `Act_Short_Name` | string | No | Short code, e.g. `ITAA1997`, `FBTAA`, `GST`. | | `Act_Title` | string | No | Full Act title, e.g. `Income Tax Assessment Act 1997`. | | `Act_Year` | int | No | Year of the Act. | | `Act_FRL_Id` | string | No | FRL **series** id, e.g. `C2004A05138`. Note this is not the compilation register id. | | `Compilation_PiT` | string | No | Compilation point-in-time; `latest` for the current compilation. | | `Provision` | string | No | Section label, e.g. `s 6-5`, `s 136`, `s 102UQ`. | | `Provision_Key` | string | No | Normalised join key to the history datasets (`s 6-5`→`s6-5`, `Section 3`→`s3`; sub-provisions roll up to their section). | | `Heading` | string | Yes | Section heading, e.g. `Income according to ordinary concepts (ordinary income)`. | | `Text` | string | Yes | Full operative text (subsections/notes/tables concatenated). Genuinely empty for reserved and "Map of…" navigational sections. | | `Source_URL` | string | No | `https://www.legislation.gov.au/{Act_FRL_Id}/latest/text#{provision}`. Resume key. | ### 2. Amendment History (`amendment_history`) One row per **amendment event**: which provision changed, the action taken, the amending Act, and when it commenced. Reconstructed from FRL compilation **endnotes** (Endnote 2 abbreviation key, Endnote 3 legislation history, Endnote 4 amendment history). | Column | Type | Nullable | Description | |---|---|---|---| | `Act_Short_Name` / `Act_Title` / `Act_Year` / `Act_FRL_Id` | — | No | Identify the principal Act. | | `Provision` | string | No | Provision affected, e.g. `s 5B`, `s. 41-5(1)`, `Note 1 to s. 41-5(1)`. | | `Provision_Key` | string | No | Normalised key; joins to `principal_legislation`. Sub-provision and note amendments roll up to their section. | | `Action_Code` | string | Yes | Raw endnote code: `am` amended, `ad` added/inserted, `rep` repealed, `rs` repealed & substituted. | | `Action` | string | No | Expanded verb, e.g. `Amended`, `Inserted`, `Repealed`. | | `Amending_Act_Number` | int | No | Number of the amending Act. | | `Amending_Act_Year` | int | No | Year of the amending Act. | | `Amending_Act_FRL_Id` | string | Yes | FRL id of the amending Act, e.g. `C2013A00124`. | | `Amending_Item` | string | Yes | Schedule item that made the change, e.g. `Sch 11 item 10` (best-effort; ~58% filled — see Limitations). | | `Commencement` | string | Yes | Commencement detail, e.g. `Sch 11 (items 10-25, 27): 30 June 2013`. | | `Application_Saving_Transitional` | string | Yes | Application/saving/transitional provisions where present. | | `History_Note` | string | No | Reconstructed note, e.g. `Amended by No 124 of 2013, effective 30 June 2013`. **Our wording, not the FRL's** — see Attribution. | | `Source_URL` | string | No | Stable per-event URL (resume key). | ### 3. Legislation + History Notes (`legislation_with_history`) **The flagship dataset.** A left-join of #1 and #2 on `(Act_FRL_Id, Provision_Key)` — **one row per current section, carrying its full text AND its complete chronological amendment history.** | Column | Type | Nullable | Description | |---|---|---|---| | `Act_Short_Name` / `Act_Title` / `Act_Year` / `Act_FRL_Id` | — | No | Identify the principal Act. | | `Provision` / `Provision_Key` / `Heading` / `Text` | — | — | The current section text (as in #1). | | `Amendment_Count` | int | No | Number of amendment events (0 = never amended since the Act commenced). | | `First_Amended` | string | Yes | Earliest amending Act, e.g. `No 139 of 1987`. | | `Last_Amended` | string | Yes | Most recent amending Act. | | `Amending_Acts` | string | Yes | Distinct amending Acts in chronological order, ` \| `-separated. | | `History_Notes` | string | Yes | Chronological reconstructed notes: `Amended by No 139 of 1987, effective 18 Dec 1987 \| Amended by No 145 of 1995, …`. | | `Source_URL` | string | No | The provision's `/latest/text#{provision}` URL. | --- ## Acts Covered The 22 principal Acts administered by the Australian Taxation Office, including: - **Income Tax Assessment Act 1997** and **Income Tax Assessment Act 1936** - **A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999**, plus the Luxury Car Tax and Wine Equalisation Tax Acts - **Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act 1986** - **Taxation Administration Act 1953** (including the Schedule 1 administrative provisions) - **Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993**, **Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992** and related superannuation Acts - **Fuel Tax Act 2006**, **Petroleum Resource Rent Tax Assessment Act 1987** - **Tax Agent Services Act 2009** --- ## Use Cases - **Statutory RAG** — each provision is a self-contained retrieval unit with a stable `Source_URL`; retrieve the section text and its amendment lineage together so generated answers cite both the current provision *and* when it last changed - **Temporal legislation models** — train or evaluate on dated amendment events (`Commencement`, `Amending_Act_Year`, `Action`) for legislative change prediction, version diffing, or "law as at date X" retrieval - **Legislative graph construction** — build provision-level change networks: which amending Acts touch which parts of the ITAA 1997, and how amendment activity clusters over time - **Fine-tuning Australian tax LLMs** — the full operative text of the core tax statutes, section-segmented and cleanly labelled, as a grounding corpus - **Cross-referencing ATO guidance** — explode `Relevant_Legislative_Provisions` in the [companion ATO dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/simplelex/ATO-Australian-Tax-Rulings-and-Guidance) and join on `Provision_Key` to see every ruling that interprets a given section - **Compliance and drafting tooling** — surface the current text of a provision plus what changed and when, without a commercial subscription --- ## Limitations - **Currency** — compilations are checked for amendments automatically and the datasets rebuilt when a new compilation is registered. Between checks, a recently commenced amendment may not yet be reflected. Always verify against [legislation.gov.au](https://www.legislation.gov.au) for official or time-sensitive purposes. - **`Amending_Item` is ~58% filled** — the remaining blanks are genuinely unattributable from the endnotes: inserted sections that no schedule item names individually, and Acts published in the older OLDF endnote format (notably the Superannuation Guarantee Charge Act). - **History notes are reconstructed, not reproduced** — `History_Note` and `History_Notes` are generated in our own wording from the endnote facts (provision, action, amending Act, commencement). They are not the ATO Legal Database's history notes, which are separately copyrighted. - **Repealed provisions** — the joined dataset covers sections present in the *current* compilation. Provisions repealed or renumbered out of existence appear in `amendment_history` but have no row in `principal_legislation`, so they drop out of the left join. - **Text extraction** — provision text is extracted from the FRL's compilation epub files. Complex tables, formulae, and diagrams may be flattened or lost; check `Source_URL` for anything structurally unusual. - **Point-in-time text is not in this dataset** — per-compilation-version provision text (what any section said on any past date) exists but is served separately and is not published here. - **Australian Commonwealth jurisdiction only** — no state or territory legislation, and no non-tax Commonwealth Acts. - **Not legal advice** — see Terms of Service. --- ## Attribution — required wording The Federal Register of Legislation licence requires attribution in **specific words**, not just a credit. If you redistribute this data or content derived from it, use the statement that matches what you are redistributing: **For provision text reproduced substantially unchanged** (the `Text` and `Heading` columns): > Sourced from the Federal Register of Legislation at [full date of download]. For the latest information on Australian Government law please go to https://www.legislation.gov.au. **For the reconstructed history notes and any restructured or derived content** (`History_Note`, `History_Notes`, `Amendment_Count`, and the joined dataset generally): > Based on content from the Federal Register of Legislation at [full date of download]. For the latest information on Australian Government legislation please go to https://www.legislation.gov.au. Substitute the date you downloaded the data — for this dataset, the "Last updated" date shown on this repo. Most users of the joined dataset need the **"Based on"** form, since the amendment history is derived rather than reproduced. --- ## Source & Licensing **Source:** [Federal Register of Legislation](https://www.legislation.gov.au) (legislation.gov.au), © Commonwealth of Australia. All content on the Federal Register of Legislation is provided under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), **with the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and any material identified as third-party copyright**. Neither is reproduced in this dataset. The licence permits commercial use, redistribution and adaptation, provided the attribution requirements above are met. This structured compilation is published by [SimpleLex](https://huggingface.co/simplelex) under the same CC BY 4.0 terms. The amendment-history notes are **reconstructed in our own wording from the FRL's Crown-copyright compilation endnotes** — deliberately, so that no third-party commercial history notes are reproduced. --- ## Citation ```bibtex @dataset{simplelex_au_tax_legislation_2026, author = {SimpleLex}, title = {Australian Tax Legislation \& Amendment History}, year = {2026}, publisher = {Hugging Face}, url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/simplelex/Australian-Tax-Legislation-and-Amendment-History}, note = {Based on content from the Federal Register of Legislation, https://www.legislation.gov.au, CC BY 4.0} } ``` --- ## Terms of Service **Last updated:** July 2026 ### What this product is A structured dataset of the principal Acts administered by the Australian Taxation Office, together with reconstructed per-section amendment histories, sourced from the Federal Register of Legislation (legislation.gov.au) and compiled into machine-readable CSV and NDJSON format. ### 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. You **do** need to carry the FRL attribution wording set out above when redistributing the source content — that requirement comes from the Commonwealth's licence, not from us. ### Source material and copyright The underlying legislation is © Commonwealth of Australia, published under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), excluding the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and any third-party copyright material. 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. It is a reproduction and restructuring of publicly available legislation, 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. Legislation is amended continuously and a compilation may be superseded at any time. The authoritative text is the one published at [legislation.gov.au](https://www.legislation.gov.au) — always verify there 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. --- ## Support the Project This dataset is free. If it saves you time on data engineering, a coffee is appreciated: **[☕ Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/simplelex)**