tax
Structures the tax questions a growing business faces — corporate income, sales and use, payroll, nexus, and the obligations created by hiring or selling somewhere new. Use this to work out what a new state or country obligates you to, prepare for a tax filing or audit, understand sales tax on your product, or check what a remote hire or new market triggers.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cbrock84/headcount /tmp/tax && cp -r /tmp/tax/plugins/finance/skills/tax ~/.claude/skills/taxSKILL.md
# Tax Tax obligations are created by facts — where you sell, where people work, what you sell — not by decisions anyone consciously makes. The characteristic failure is discovering an obligation years after it began, with penalties and interest attached. **This structures the question and tells you what to ask. Tax is technical, jurisdiction-specific, and changes frequently. Positions on anything material belong with a qualified tax adviser or CPA, not a checklist.** ## Nexus: the thing that creates obligations quietly Nexus is the connection that gives a jurisdiction the right to tax you. It is established by activities most companies do not think of as tax events: - **An employee working somewhere.** One remote hire in a new state commonly creates payroll registration, income tax withholding, and often corporate income tax nexus. - **Economic activity without physical presence.** Since *Wayfair*, US states set sales-tax nexus on revenue or transaction thresholds — a few hundred thousand dollars, or a couple of hundred transactions, with the numbers differing by state. - **Inventory held somewhere**, including in a third-party fulfillment warehouse you never visit. - **Contractors, or attending trade shows**, in some jurisdictions. Review nexus whenever you hire in a new location, cross a revenue threshold, or change how you distribute. Registering late costs more than registering early, and voluntary disclosure programs exist precisely because this is so common. ## Sales tax is about what you sell, not what you charge Taxability of software and services varies enormously by state: SaaS is taxable in some, exempt in others, and treated differently again if delivered with implementation services. The classification of your own product is a determination worth getting in writing and revisiting when packaging changes — see `revenue:pricing-and-packaging`, because bundling can change the answer. Exemption certificates for tax-exempt customers must be collected and kept current. In an audit, missing certificates mean you owe the tax you did not collect. ## The calendar is most of the discipline Tax failures are usually administrative, not technical: a missed registration, a late filing, an estimated payment nobody scheduled. Maintain a calendar of every obligation by jurisdiction with an owner, and treat it as part of `finance:financial-reporting-and-close`. ## Where it meets the rest of finance - `finance:financial-reporting-and-close` — tax provision and the deferred position - `finance:capital-allocation` — after-tax returns are the only ones that matter for a decision - `people:workforce-planning` — every hire in a new jurisdiction is a tax question before it is a cost question - `finance:revenue-recognition` — book and tax treatment diverge, and the difference is itself something to track ## Never - Assume no obligation because there is no office in a jurisdiction. - Treat your product's taxability as settled across states without a determination. - Sell into exempt customers without current exemption certificates. - Take a position on a material matter without a qualified adviser.
Concentrates marketing and sales effort on a named set of accounts rather than on volume — qualifying whether the model fits your economics at all, building the account list and the buying group inside each, tiering effort against account value, coordinating so the account experiences one campaign rather than several, and measuring account progression instead of leads. Use this to decide whether to run an account-based program, build one, or work out why an existing one produces activity and no pipeline.
Designs orchestrator-and-subagent hierarchies for a repository — splitting agents by exclusive write surface, pairing every producer with an independent auditor, and enforcing the split with a script that runs in CI. Use this whenever the user wants to set up, expand, audit, or fix a multi-agent or subagent structure for a codebase; asks how to divide work between agents; wants agent charters, roles, or a surface map written; or is hitting agents that collide on the same files, review their own work, or drift from their remit. Also use when sizing a roster or deciding whether a new agent is justified.
Governs models and AI systems in production — intended use, evaluation, monitoring, human oversight, documentation, and the decision to deploy or retire. Use this before deploying a model or AI feature, when defining evaluation criteria, when a model's behavior has drifted, when assessing AI risk or regulatory exposure, or when deciding whether an AI system is fit for a consequential decision.
Produces executive-level research — market sizing, competitor mapping, trend analysis, and strategic intelligence — grounded in cited sources with the confidence in each claim made explicit. Use this to analyze a market or industry, map competitors, evaluate a market-entry or build-versus-buy decision, produce a research brief, or assemble evidence for a decision. Also use when comparing options that need a structured, evidence-based verdict rather than an opinion.
Optimizes for AI assistants and AI-generated answers — being retrievable, being cited, and being represented accurately when a model answers on your behalf. Use this when traffic is shifting from links to AI answers, when a brand is misrepresented or absent in AI responses, when planning content for retrieval rather than ranking, or when deciding how AI search changes an existing SEO program.
Improves visibility and conversion in the App Store and Google Play — metadata, keywords, screenshots, ratings, and the listing experience that turns an impression into an install. Use this to audit or optimize an app listing, plan a launch listing, diagnose poor install conversion, or improve store search visibility.
Protects and restores data — backup coverage and scope, retention, immutability against ransomware, and proving restores actually work. Use this to design a backup regime, verify restores, plan retention, protect backups from ransomware, or recover from data loss.
Runs the planning cycle — annual budget, rolling forecast, consolidation of business unit inputs, and the variance analysis that explains actuals against plan. Use this to build or challenge a budget, run a forecast cycle, consolidate departmental submissions, explain why results diverged from plan, or improve forecast accuracy.