Terms of Use
Last updated: 19 August 2026
These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your access to and use of openaccountants.com, our API and MCP server, the Tax Library, and related services (the "Service"), operated by OpenAccountants ("OpenAccountants", "we", "us") from Malta. By using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
1. What OpenAccountants is
OpenAccountants is an open library of Tax Guides, reference documents describing tax rules, rates, thresholds, and citations for a jurisdiction, intended to be used by people, AI agents, and developers. In these Terms:
• A Guide (or Tax Guide) is the human-readable tax reference published on OpenAccountants.
• A Skill is the machine-readable representation of a Guide, made available to AI systems and developers through our API, MCP server, and developer tools.
• A Verified Accountant(an "Accountant") is an approved accounting or tax professional whose credentials OpenAccountants has checked and admitted to the network. Being a Verified Accountant does not, by itself, create a legal partnership, employment, agency, joint venture, equity interest, exclusivity, authority to bind OpenAccountants, or any guarantee of work, referrals, or revenue. It reflects only that OpenAccountants has verified the professional's credentials and admitted them to the network.
Each Guide carries a quality indicator showing whether it has been reviewed by an accounting professional. A review record means that a named Verified Accountant reviewed a complete Guide version for a stated period; it is a record of that professional opinion at that point in time, not an ongoing warranty.
2. Not professional advice
The Service and all Guides are provided for general informational and computational purposes only. They are not tax, legal, accounting, or financial advice, and do not create a professional or client relationship between you and OpenAccountants or any Accountant. No Accountant who authored, reviewed, or attested to a Guide owes you any duty of care, or advises you, by virtue of that Guide. You must have any output reviewed by a qualified professional you engage who is licensed in the relevant jurisdiction before filing or acting on it.
3. No warranty
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied. Tax law changes frequently and Guides may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect, including rates, thresholds, and citations. A Guide marked "source-cited draft" has notbeen reviewed by a credentialed accountant. Even "accountant-reviewed" Guides are reference material, not a guarantee of correctness for any particular situation. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, accurate, or error-free.
4. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, OpenAccountants, its team, and the Verified Accountants in its network will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss (including taxes, penalties, interest, or professional fees) arising from your use of, or reliance on, the Service or any Guide. In particular, no Accountant is liable to you, or to anyone who relies on your work, for any loss arising from a Guide they authored, reviewed, or attested to. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including under any mandatory consumer protections that apply to you.
5. Assumption of risk and your responsibility
You use OpenAccountants entirely at your own risk. Every Guide is general reference material, not advice for your situation, and may be incomplete, out of date, or wrong. You are solely responsible for deciding whether to rely on anything here, and for having it checked by a professional you engage who is licensed in your jurisdiction, before you file, pay, or take any position. You accept full and sole responsibility and liability for any decision you make, or action you take, based on the Service or any Guide, and for any resulting tax, penalty, interest, loss, or cost.
6. The accountants owe you no duty, and you release them
An Accountant who authors, reviews, or attests to a Guide is contributing general professional knowledge to a public, open library. They are not your accountant, form no engagement or client relationship with you, owe you no duty of care, and give you no advice. To the maximum extent permitted by law, you release and waive any claim of any kind against any Accountant in our network, and against OpenAccountants and its team, arising from your use of, or reliance on, any Guide or the Service. If you want advice you can rely on, you must separately engage a professional under a written engagement letter that sets the scope, fee, and their responsibility to you.
7. Verified Accountants
If you review or help keep Guides current as an accounting professional in the OpenAccountants network (a "Verified Accountant" or "Accountant"):
(a) What a review means. You are reviewing open reference material against published guidance and current legislation for your jurisdiction. A review record means you reviewed a complete Guide version for a stated period. You are notreviewing any specific person's return, signing a filing, or forming a client engagement with anyone who later uses the Guide.
(b) No liability to users. Nothing you author, review, or attest to on OpenAccountants creates any duty of care or liability to any user of the Service or to anyone who relies on their own use of a Guide. Users assume that risk themselves and release you, as set out in sections 5 and 6.
(c) The Verified Accountant designation. Being a Verified Accountant does not, by itself, create a legal partnership, employment, agency, joint venture, equity interest, exclusivity, authority to bind OpenAccountants, or any guarantee of work, referrals, or revenue. It reflects only that OpenAccountants has verified your credentials and admitted you to the network. Either you or OpenAccountants may end the arrangement at any time.
(d) Public credit. Your name and professional credentials will be published publicly as the Accountant who reviewed the Guide, as described in our Privacy Policy. You consent to this and confirm you are entitled to use the credentials you provide. We never publish your email, phone, login, or private contact details.
(e) Your warranties. You confirm you are an accounting professional in good standing in the jurisdiction(s) whose Guides you review, and that your reviews are accurate to the best of your professional knowledge at the time of submission.
(f) Contribution licence.Unless agreed otherwise in writing, the edits and review records you submit are licensed under the project's open-source licence (AGPL-3.0), and you grant OpenAccountants a worldwide, royalty-free licence to publish, distribute, and adapt them as part of the Service.
(g) Paid engagements. Where you are engaged for paid review (for example through a freelance marketplace), the scope, fee, and deadline are governed by the specific contract for that engagement.
(h) Professional body compliance. A review recorded on OpenAccountants constitutes the professional opinion of the named accountant based on their technical knowledge of the relevant jurisdiction. It does not constitute an audit, review, compilation, or any form of assurance engagement as defined under the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) Code, the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, the ACCA Code of Ethics and Conduct, the ICAEW Code of Ethics, APES 110 (APESB), the SAICA Code of Conduct, the CPA Canada Code of Professional Conduct, or any other applicable professional standards. OpenAccountants is not an accounting firm and does not accept professional liability in connection with reviewed Guides. Accountants are solely responsible for ensuring that their participation is consistent with their own professional obligations.
8. Open-source licence
The Tax Library is open source and licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0), with a commercial licence available on request. Your use of the library's content is subject to the applicable licence terms.
9. Acceptable use
You agree not to misuse the Service: no unlawful use; no attempts to disrupt, overload, or gain unauthorised access; no misrepresenting a Guide's review status or an Accountant's involvement; and no use that infringes others' rights. We may suspend or terminate access for breach.
10. Accounts
You are responsible for your account and for keeping your login secure. Accountant accounts must use your real identity and accurate credentials.
11. Intellectual property
The OpenAccountants name and brand are ours. Guide content is governed by the open-source licence above. Other site content is owned by OpenAccountants or its licensors.
12. Plugins, MCP server, and AI-client integration
We publish plugins and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that let third-party AI clients (for example Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf) call into the Tax Library as machine-readable Skills. These integrations are part of the Service.
(a) Fair use. The MCP server is rate-limited and intended for honest interactive use. You agree not to scrape it, run automated extraction pipelines against it, or otherwise use it in a way that imposes a disproportionate load.
(b) Plugin installation is your choice. When you install an OpenAccountants plugin into a third-party AI client, you are configuring that client to call our MCP server. We do not control how the AI client surfaces, edits, summarises, or otherwise transforms the Skill content. Outputs you see are produced by the third-party AI, not by us, and you are responsible for how you use them.
(c) A citation to us is not proof we published it.AI systems misattribute sources. An AI may name OpenAccountants, a Verified Accountant, or a tax authority as the source of a statement that none of them made; it may state a figure we do publish while crediting it to an authority we never cited; and it may present either as though it came from us. Seeing "OpenAccountants" beside a statement in an AI's output is not evidence that we published that statement, that any Accountant reviewed it, or that the cited authority supports it. Only the Guide as published on openaccountants.com is our content. Before relying on anything an AI attributes to us, open the Guide and check it there. We are not responsible for statements attributed to us that we did not publish, or for citations an AI generates.
(d) Handoff data.When you use a "request review" tool or similar handoff to an Accountant, the scenario you submit is stored on our infrastructure so the named accountant can prepare. See our Privacy Policy for how that data is handled.
13. The accountant handoff and engagement letters
Some Guides and plugin commands route you to a named accounting professional in our network (a "Verified Accountant") with a booking link. This routing is a facilitated introduction, not an engagement.
(a) No client-accountant relationship is created by booking, by an initial call with the Accountant, or by use of the Service. A client-accountant relationship arises only when you and the Accountant separately enter into a written engagement letter that identifies the scope, fee, and deadline.
(b) The Accountant is independent.The Accountant's professional advice and any filings they prepare under a signed engagement are governed by the engagement letter between you and them. OpenAccountants is not a party to that engagement, charges no commission on it, and accepts no liability for it.
(c) Working-paper outputs you own. Computations, classified transactions, draft return lines, and similar working-paper outputs produced by an AI agent using the Service are yours. We claim no ownership of them. You are responsible for having them reviewed by a qualified professional before filing or acting on them.
14. Usage data, and what we may do with it
We record how the Service is used, including the questions your AI agent sends to our tools, so that we can operate it, keep the Guides current, and see which tax questions go unanswered. Identifier-shaped text (emails, phone numbers, tax and account numbers) is stripped automatically before storage. What we log, and why, is set out in our Privacy Policy.
Aggregate statistics. We may compile, publish and commercially license aggregate statistics derived from usage — for example how many questions were asked about a topic in a jurisdiction in a given month, and which topics have no Guide. Aggregate statistics describe a market, never a person: they contain no name, no account, no session, and no question text.
Your questions are not sold. We do not sell, license or otherwise provide the text of your questions, your identity, or any row-level record of your activity to any commercial partner. Where a partner sponsors a jurisdiction, topic or corridor, they receive placement and aggregate statistics only.
Introductions only if you ask. We will not introduce you to any accountant, firm or partner unless you explicitly request it. Using the Service is never treated as agreement to be contacted.
15. Third-party services
The Service links to and integrates with third parties (for example hosting providers, AI agents, freelance marketplaces, scheduling tools). We are not responsible for third-party services, and their own terms apply.
16. Indemnity
You will indemnify and hold harmless OpenAccountants, its team, and the Accountants in its network from and against any claim, loss, liability, or cost (including reasonable legal fees) arising from or related to your use of, or reliance on, the Service or any Guide, your breach of these Terms, or your unlawful or infringing use. This includes any claim brought by a third party (for example a tax authority, client, or employer) in connection with how you used the Service or any Guide.
17. Changes
We may update the Service and these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted here with a new "last updated" date; continued use means you accept the updated Terms.
18. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of Malta, and the courts of Malta have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to any mandatory consumer protections in your country of residence.
19. Contact
OpenAccountants: info@openaccountants.com. See also our Privacy Policy.