We're accountants. We built this because we saw the gap.
Developers are using AI to do their taxes. That's risky. Our mission is to democratise accounting for developers — open rules, real citations, verified by professionals.
Our story
We started as accountants. Then we started building AI tools for accounting. And then we noticed something that worried us.
Developers — freelancers, sole proprietors, people running real businesses — were feeding their financial data to AI agents and filing returns based on the output. No verification. No citations. No second opinion. Just a language model guessing at tax law and a developer trusting it because the answer sounded confident.
As accountants, we know how dangerous that is. Tax rules have cliffs, phase-outs, mid-year changes, and jurisdiction-specific exceptions that a general AI will get wrong. Not sometimes. Routinely.
So we built OpenAccountants: an open-source library of accounting skills that any AI agent can use. Every rule cites the IRC. Every threshold is visible. Every computation is documented. And licensed professionals verify every section before it goes live.
Why the industry wasn't ready
Every accounting firm website looks the same. A stock photo of a handshake. “Your trusted partner for financial success.” A services grid with nine tiles. An about page that says “personalised service” and “we go beyond the numbers.” A blog that was updated for three months, then abandoned.
That model is built for someone choosing between three local firms. It communicates “we are safe, qualified, and indistinguishable from the firm next door.” It was never designed for a world where a developer in San Francisco asks an AI agent to compute their QBI deduction at 2am.
We think accounting knowledge should be open, verifiable, and accessible to anyone — not locked behind hourly rates or proprietary software. That's what we're building.
What we believe
Our network
A growing community of accountants across jurisdictions — verifying skills, reviewing returns, and making AI-generated tax work safe.
3
Countries active
1
Accountants
6
Recruiting
ACCA
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
CPA
Certified Public Accountant
ICAEW
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
AICPA
American Institute of CPAs
How OpenAccountants works
1. Skills
Accounting rules written as markdown files. Each skill handles one domain — bookkeeping, Schedule C, QBI deduction, California adjustments. Install them in any AI agent and they guide it through your specific situation.
2. Verification
Licensed accountants review every skill section-by-section. They check the rules against current tax law, leave expert comments, and sign off. Their verification is public and linked to their credentials.
3. Review
After running the skills, upload your worksheets for professional review. A verified accountant checks your numbers against a structured checklist and provides a written attestation.
We can't do this alone
Today, OpenAccountants covers US federal, California, Malta, and Germany. That's a start. But there are 50 US states, dozens of countries, and entire accounting domains — bookkeeping standards, audit procedures, payroll, VAT — that need skills written and verified.
This is bigger than one team. We need accountants who understand the rules. We need developers who can write them as code. And we need people who care enough about getting this right to put their name on it publicly.
If you're an accountant who's tired of the stock-photo industry, a developer who's been burned by bad AI tax advice, or just someone who thinks professional knowledge should be open — there's a place for you here.