OpenAccountants MCP Server

A read-only Model Context Protocol server that gives Claude, Cursor, and any MCP client on-demand access to 134 countries of open-source tax skills — no manual file uploads.

Why this exists

Without MCP, using OpenAccountants means downloading a country folder and dragging .md files into your LLM by hand, every conversation. With MCP, your AI assistant discovers and fetches the right skills automatically:

You:    "Help me with my Malta taxes. Here's my bank statement."
          ↓
Claude: calls list_jurisdictions → sees "malta"
Claude: calls list_files("malta") → foundation.md, malta-vat.md, …
Claude: calls get_file("malta", "foundation.md") → full skill in context
Claude: calls get_file("malta", "malta-vat.md") → VAT rules loaded
          ↓
Claude: now processes your bank statement with the right tax rules

Install once, configure once — skills are available in every conversation from that point on.

Tools

All access is read-only and path-sandboxed to the packages/ directory.

Quick start

1. Clone and install

Requires Python 3.10+.

git clone https://github.com/openaccountants/openaccountants.git
cd openaccountants
pip install ./mcp

Or with uv (recommended):

uv pip install ./mcp

2. Connect to your AI client

Pick one of the following.

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openaccountants": {
      "command": "openaccountants-mcp"
    }
  }
}

If installed in a virtualenv or with uv:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openaccountants": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/openaccountants/mcp", "openaccountants-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json in the project (or via Cursor Settings > MCP):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openaccountants": {
      "command": "openaccountants-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Any other MCP client

Run openaccountants-mcp (or python -m openaccountants_mcp) as a stdio transport server.

3. Start chatting

Help me with my 2025 taxes. Here's my bank statement.

The AI will call the MCP tools behind the scenes to load the right country skills, then classify transactions and produce a working paper — all without you uploading a single file.

Environment variables

What changes vs manual upload

Smoke test

Run from the repo root to verify everything works:

python mcp/smoke_test.py

All 14 checks should pass (path safety, tool outputs, jurisdiction count).

Disclaimer

All skills and outputs are for informational and computational purposes only. Not tax advice. Not a replacement for professional judgment. Content quality is tiered (Q1-Q5) — most skills are not practitioner battle-tested. Always have a qualified professional review before filing.