irs-tax-calculator

IRS Tax Calculator

Teaches the agent when and how to call the irs-taxpayer-mcp MCP server: a deterministic, local-only tax estimation engine covering federal and state individual income tax for TY2024 through TY2026. The engine makes no network calls and stores no taxpayer data; see Privacy and boundaries below.

Needs access to

This skill requires the irs-taxpayer-mcp MCP server. If it is not already connected, add it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "irs-taxpayer": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "irs-taxpayer-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

No API key, login, or account is required. The server runs entirely on the user's machine.

Privacy and boundaries (tell the user this before calculating)

• The engine performs no runtime network requests and persists no taxpayer data between calls.
• Facts the user types into this conversation are still processed by the agent's own model provider. If the user needs fully local handling, point them to the direct CLI instead: npm install --global irs-taxpayer-mcp, then irs-taxpayer-mcp intake --output taxpayer-facts.json and irs-taxpayer-mcp plan --facts taxpayer-facts.json.
• It is an estimation and planning tool, not tax preparation or filing software. It does not generate, sign, or transmit a return.
• State numeric estimates only exist for an explicit tax-year profile. Unsupported state/year/filing-status combinations return an error instead of a rough guess ("fail closed"). Always check the tool's response for an error before presenting a number.
• Always include the tool's own disclaimer text in your answer to the user; do not strip it out.

How to choose a tool

Start broad, then go deep. Pick ONE of these three entry points based on what the user actually asked:

1. One-off calculation ("how much federal tax on $150k MFJ?"): call the single matching tool directly from the category tables below.
2. "Give me a full picture" / "estimate my refund" / "build me a tax plan": call generate_tax_plan first. It returns structured results, the assumptions it made, official IRS/SSA sources, a calculation trace, and the exact boundaries of what it did not model. Use its assumptions and boundaries fields to tell the user what to double-check.
3. Something not covered below: call lookup_tax_rule or read reference/tool-catalog.md for the full 45-tool list with one-line descriptions, then pick the closest match.