Skip to content

Proposal: Use OpenAccountants tax classification rules as custom prompt templates #94

@michaelcutajar1995

Description

@michaelcutajar1995

Context

TaxHacker already supports custom AI prompts for category extraction, which is great for per-user customization. But every user currently has to write their own classification logic from scratch — which tax categories to use, how to handle ambiguous transactions, what conservative defaults to apply.

Proposal

OpenAccountants is an open-source library of 371 tax classification skills covering 134 countries. Each skill contains:

  • Supplier pattern libraries — e.g., "STRIPE PAYMENTS EU" → platform sales, "COMCAST BUSINESS" → utilities/deductible
  • Tax category mappings — per-country VAT rates, income tax brackets, deduction rules
  • Conservative default logic — when uncertain, assume more tax (not less), and flag the assumption

These could be adapted as pre-built prompt templates that TaxHacker users select by country instead of writing from scratch. For example, a US freelancer picks "US Schedule C" and gets classification rules for gross receipts, office expenses, utilities, meals (50% deductible), etc.

What this could look like

  1. A "Country templates" dropdown or config option in TaxHacker
  2. Each template maps to an OA skill file that gets injected into the LLM prompt
  3. Users can still customize on top of the template

Why this helps TaxHacker users

  • No prompt engineering needed — pick your country, upload receipts, go
  • Country-specific supplier patterns catch local merchants (Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, etc.)
  • Conservative defaults reduce the chance of misclassification in the user's favor (which is the dangerous direction for tax)

Compatibility

  • OA skills are MIT-friendly content (AGPL source, but the classification rules themselves are factual/statutory)
  • TaxHacker is MIT licensed
  • No dependency on OA infrastructure — the skill text would be embedded directly

Happy to contribute a proof-of-concept PR if there's interest. Would start with US Schedule C as the first template since it's the largest user base.

Repository: https://github.com/openaccountants/openaccountants

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions