The GST rule your receipt scanner doesn't know exists
- ACJ Labs
- Tax,Engineering
- 23 Jul, 2026
A restaurant receipt and a client dinner look identical to an OCR tool. Under Australian GST rules, they aren’t: entertainment expenses have their input tax credit (ITC) denied by default — GST was charged, but the business can’t claim it back — and nothing printed on the receipt tells you that.
Most receipt scanners stop at “find the vendor and the total.” Ours classifies each line against the
actual rules. A ribeye and a glass of shiraz at a steakhouse come back entertainment_denied, with
the rationale “entertainment ITC denied, no exception context.” An in-flight meal on an interstate
business flight comes back taxable — because entertainment incidental to travel is a recognised
exception that flips it back to claimable. Same-looking meal, different rule, extracted correctly
either way.
Every line carries the tax_code, a confidence score, and that one-line rationale naming the
rule — so you (or your accountant) can check the call instead of trusting a black box. ABN checksum
validation is built in too.
This reflects publicly documented Australian tax law and is provided as software output, not tax advice.
