Finance: Your US Tax & Accounting Agent
A senior-practitioner specialist for US federal tax, IRS procedure, state and local tax, and US GAAP — grounded in the Code, regulations, rulings and cases.
Overview
Most tax and accounting answers you can find online are confidently wrong in a specific way: they quote a dollar figure without saying which year it belongs to, they cite an IRS publication as though it settles the question, or they answer for a C corporation when you're an S corp — and nothing in the answer tells you which mistake was made.
The US Tax & Accounting Agent is built to not do that. It works like a senior US tax practitioner who signs returns: it establishes your facts before it concludes, it cites the authority it's actually relying on, and it is explicit about how much weight that authority carries. It covers federal tax for individuals and businesses, IRS practice and procedure, state and local tax, and US GAAP — including ASC 740, the bridge between your accounts and your tax return.
It's the US counterpart to the Australian Tax & Accounting Agent, built the same way but on US law.
The Facts It Establishes Before It Answers
This agent deliberately refuses to answer a tax question in the abstract, because the same question has different right answers depending on facts you may not have mentioned. Before it concludes, it lays out three things:
- What you've actually told it — your entity type, your states, your tax year, the amounts.
- What it's assuming — and, next to each assumption, the specific conclusion that changes if the assumption is wrong. "I'm assuming you're a C corporation; if you're an S corp or an LLC, the deferred-tax section below doesn't apply to you at all."
- What it still needs — the questions whose answers would actually move the result, ranked by how much they move it.
The rule underneath all three: no conclusion is stated more confidently than the fact it rests on. If you've already given it your situation, or it remembers you from an earlier chat, it won't re-ask.
What It Can Help With
- Federal tax, individuals and businesses — entity choice and its consequences, reasonable compensation for S corporation owners, payroll tax exposure, deductions and credits, cost recovery, and the mechanics of how a position is actually reported.
- IRS practice and procedure — what counts as authority you can rely on, how the penalty rules work, what a private letter ruling does and doesn't do for you, notices and correspondence, and where a position sits on the risk ladder.
- State and local tax — economic and physical nexus after Wayfair, the protections and limits of P.L. 86-272, apportionment, and pass-through entity taxes. It carries deep profiles for ten states and, for the other forty, tells you precisely which questions to ask rather than guessing.
- US GAAP — revenue recognition, leases, stock compensation, credit losses, business combinations, and ASC 740 income taxes: deferred tax, valuation allowances, and uncertain tax positions.
- The book-versus-tax gap — the same position can clear the threshold for penalty protection on the return and fail the higher threshold for recognizing it in your financial statements. It will tell you when you're in that gap, which is exactly where surprises live.
How It Handles Authority — and Why That Matters
Not every source is worth the same. The agent ranks what it cites and says so:
Source | How it's treated |
The Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations | Binding — the top of the ladder |
Court decisions | Binding, with attention to which court and whether it's on appeal |
Revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices | Authority you can rely on, at their own weight |
Private letter rulings | NOT authority for you — they bind only the person who requested one |
IRS publications, form instructions, FAQs | Helpful, but NOT something you can lean on in a penalty defence |
That last row is the one that catches people. Publications are written to be readable, not to be relied on, and quoting one as though it settles a question is a well-known way to lose an argument you thought you'd won. The agent will use a publication and tell you what tier it's in at the same time.
Figures That Change Every Year
Contribution limits, expensing caps, standard deductions, bracket thresholds — these reset annually, and a number that was right last year is simply wrong this year.
Rather than quoting a figure that quietly goes stale, the agent names the tax year the figure belongs to, names the document series the number comes from, and tells you to verify the current one. Where a threshold is fixed in the statute and doesn't adjust, it says that too — so you can tell the two kinds of number apart.
When To Use It
You want to… | Ask something like… |
Sanity-check an owner-compensation position | "My S corp paid me no salary this year but I took 20k in distributions — is that a problem?" |
Work out your multistate exposure | "Delaware LLC, warehouse in Texas, 00k of sales into California — what state exposures do I have?" |
Get a GAAP treatment right | "SaaS company, three-year prepaid contracts — when do I recognize the revenue?" |
Know whether you can rely on something | "I found a private letter ruling that matches my facts exactly — can I rely on it?" |
Check a current-year figure | "What's the 401(k) employee deferral limit, and how do I confirm it?" |
How You Use It
- Install US Tax & Accounting Agent from the AI Store (Finance category), pick it from your agent list, and start a chat.
- Ask your question in plain English — include your entity type, your states, and the tax year if you know them; it will ask if you don't.
- Read the facts block it opens with. If an assumption is wrong, say so — that's the cheapest correction you'll ever make.
- Follow the citations. Anything it relies on is named, so you or your accountant can check it.
Good to Know
- It is not a substitute for your CPA, EA, or tax attorney. It doesn't prepare or file returns, it doesn't represent you before the IRS, and it doesn't give engagement-specific advice on which someone has signed off. Use it to get informed, to prepare for a conversation with your adviser, and to know which questions matter — not as the final word on a filing position.
- It won't invent a number to be helpful. If a figure depends on the year and it can't confirm the current one, it will tell you where to confirm it instead of guessing.
- It remembers your situation — entity type, states, and prior context persist across conversations, so you don't re-explain your business every time.
Summary
The US Tax & Accounting Agent gives you a senior-practitioner answer on US federal tax, IRS procedure, state and local tax, and US GAAP — grounded in the Code, the regulations, rulings, cases and the accounting standards, with each source's weight stated rather than assumed. It establishes your facts and its assumptions before it concludes, and it treats figures that reset annually as things to verify rather than quote. Install it from the AI Store's Finance category, and treat it as a very well-read colleague rather than as your signed-off adviser.