Case study · Web + iPhone · My own product · In progress
I was three years behind on my own tax. The research said I wasn’t unusual: around 60% of Australia’s 16 million individual lodgers pay an agent despite the ATO’s free myTax — out of fear, not complexity. And nobody offered a guided catch-up experience. So Taxare is built for the anxious, multi-year lodger first, because I was one.
Decisions that mattered · 01
- The legal frame is the product spec. Taxare is an unregistered tracker and organiser with a myTax handoff — deliberately inside the TPB safe harbour (TPB(GS) 14/2011). Every feature is shaped by that: general, ATO-derived, occupation-level information only; the user classifies and confirms every claim; the user lodges.
- One number first. The first screen shows what the backlog is worth — or costs — before anything else. The fear is bigger than the bill; arithmetic beats fear.
- Never store the TFN. Not asked for, not stored, not needed. It removes the single most sensitive piece of data from the whole system.
- Questions, not a form. The user never needs to know which box an amount belongs in.
- A hard deadline. Release 1 ships for 31 October 2026 because that’s when the year’s returns are due. Scope bends to the date, not the other way round.
Stack
PHP 8, MySQL, Material Design 3 web components. PHPUnit, test-first. Document reading for payslips and income statements.
Outcome
Release 1 launching October 2026.
Screens · 02
Screens will be added when Taxare launches in October 2026.