swaitsandClaude Opus 5.5
535874e0f3
The P3 cutover review's open point 2: a state's LLC filing fee, booked to an organization-costs account (tax category organization_startup), read as "Cash paid to suppliers and employees". B-14 rule 5 sent a payment to class (g) only when every operating line's account was taxes_licenses, so the account, not the payee, decided. ASC 230-10-45-17, read in EY's guide that reproduces it (Statement of cash flows, July 2026, p. 43; the PDF re-fetched and its SHA-256 recorded in docs/spec/sources/fasb-asc.md), lists apart "(b) Cash payments to other suppliers and employees for other goods or services" and "(c) Cash payments to governments for taxes, duties, fines, and other fees or penalties". 45-25's classes name only income taxes (f) among the latter, so the rest are (g), other operating cash payments. A formation filing fee is rightly an organization cost (its account and tax line), and still a payment to a government: the payee is what 45-17(c) is about. So rule 5 now sends a payment's government part to (g): of an operating payment the structure classes (d), what went to a party with the government_agency or tax_agency role (the chain root's parties, so a reversal keeps its original's class) is (g), on any account; and, as before, a payment whose every operating line is on a taxes_licenses account is (g). Every party a government: the whole payment. A government and a supplier named together: the payment is split by their resolved shares (B-35), the government's part (g), the rest (d), since ASC 230-10-45-22 has "each separately identifiable source or each separately identifiable use" classed "on the basis of the nature of the underlying cash flows" (EY p. 44; quoted in fasb-asc.md; it names the three activities, read for 45-25's classes too as a CONVENTION). The government's part is the payment x its share / the whole, rounded half to even to the base currency's places, the rest exact, so the line still sums to the payment and a reversal mirrors it. Shares that don't resolve leave the whole payment (d). One naming no party is decided by its accounts. Receipts are untouched (a refund from a government stays (c)). No total changes, only which operating row a payment is in. Two limits, from the review of this change: a government selling goods or services (postage) is 45-17(b)'s supplier "for other goods or services", so the rule says, and the handbook tells the agent, to add such a payee as a vendor, never with the government_agency role (the books can't tell what a payment bought; the role says it). And payroll keeps its structure (CONVENTION): an entry with a line on the salary expense or a payroll payable control account, or on a pay tax category (salaries_wages, officer_compensation, employee_benefits, pension_profit_sharing), stays (d) whoever it names: withheld taxes remitted are the employees' pay, and the payables mix them with the employer's taxes, which a remittance can't tell apart. So a remittance to the IRS is (d) as it was before this change; the employer's payroll tax paid on its own expense account is a tax, (g). The first company's books have this case: their state filing fee moves from "Cash paid to suppliers and employees" to "Other operating cash payments" at every date once its entry names the state's agency with the government_agency role and its own entry is the one whose cash the statement lists (paid from the bank, or on a card that is a lender's credit, D-42, or by a member through the members' account while it is a financing account, B-14 rule 11, the way that fee was paid); charged to an operating-payable card, its cash leaves in the card payment, whose payee is the bank, and it stays with suppliers. STATUS says how to check both, and that the cutover goldens' cash-flow snapshots will differ on the two class lines only (totals the same), so the next cutover diff isn't read as a regression. Docs: rules.md B-14 rule 5 (the rule, its source quoted, the date and what it was before); fasb-asc.md (45-17(b) and (c) quoted exactly, with the guide's SHA-256); the handbook's entries section (name the agency as the party on a tax, fee, fine or penalty paid to a government; a shared payment named with both amounts; a government selling services added as a vendor; payroll remittances stay with pay; a fee on a card follows the card payment); fasb-asc.md also quotes 45-22 and 45-22A; bookspec example cash-flow.government-fees.toml (a filing fee and a lawyer on one organization-costs account, a license on taxes and licenses with no party, a penalty to a tax agency on the wrong account, paper from a supplier, an annual report paid through a registered agent, 37.00 the state's and 100.00 the agent's; every figure by hand) with a new `class.<a..g>` key in the cash_flow query (bookspec README; the runner checks every class the statement has is given); testing.md; STATUS. Tests: ledger-core tests/spec_cash_flow.rs `a_payment_to_a_government_is_other_operating` (the filing fee and a penalty to a tax agency (g); the same account paid to a lawyer, or with no payee, (d); its reversal next month keeps (g); a refund (c)), `a_government_payee_moves_a_fee_on_any_account` (a taxes_licenses license with no party (g); a payment shared half and half between a government and a printer split 50.00 (g) and 50.00 (d), the government alone all (g)), `a_shared_government_payment_splits_to_the_cent` (a third by percent of 100.01: 33.34 (g), 66.67 (d); amounts split as given; the reversal mirrors to the cent), `a_payroll_remittance_to_a_tax_agency_stays_pay` (withheld taxes remitted from a payable holding its payroll role, and pay on a salaries_wages account, stay (d) with the IRS named; the employer's tax on its own expense account is (g)), `a_government_selling_services_is_a_supplier` (postage to a vendor (d); given government_agency, (g): the limit the handbook guards); src cashflow.rs `tests` `a_government_part_rounds_half_to_even` and the proptest `a_government_part_sums_and_mirrors`; the bookspec example; from the P4 review, `a_reversal_takes_its_originals_payee` (a fee and its reversal next month land in one class, the chain's payee deciding: the books keep a chain's parties one, so reading the reversal's own parties is an equivalent mutant) and `a_shared_government_payment_a_member_paid_splits_both_ways` (a shared payment a member paid: each part with its own on_behalf; fails with the on-behalf part unsplit). docs/mcp-interface.md: books.cash_flow and the Roles paragraph say a government or tax agency payee makes a payment other operating, and a shared one two operating lines. Broken to confirm: without the payee check the five spec tests and the example fail; without the split for mixed payees the two shared-payment tests and the example (class.d -549.50) fail; without the payroll exclusion the payroll test fails; rounding toward zero fails both unit tests; without the tax-category route `operating_classes_follow_asc_230_10_45_25`, the second test and the example fail. The viewer's cash flow page, rendered on made-up books before and after: the fee moved from "Cash paid to suppliers and employees" to "Other operating cash payments", every total the same; and on made-up books with an annual report shared between the state and an agent: each part on its own class line, every total the same. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T3gXMVt7XJPi6ens1or9Dj
Specification sources
wanderbooks' rules come from documents, not from anyone's memory. This
directory holds the authorities the engine's specs cite (docs/spec/rules.md
is the rule catalog), and every spec block in the code carries a SOURCE:
line pointing into it.
The authority stack
There is no single "bible" of US bookkeeping. Authority is layered, and the layers differ in what they cover and in whether we may copy them:
| Layer | What it governs | Copyright | Here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pacioli (1494), Geijsbeek translation (1914) | The mechanics of double entry: debits equal credits, the trial balance, one money, writing only forward, correcting by opposite entry, closing into capital. No modern standard restates these; they predate every regulator. | Public domain | Vendored verbatim: sources/pacioli-1494.md |
| IRS: Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, publications, form instructions | Records and supporting documents, retention, accounting periods and methods, information returns (1099), capitalization (de minimis, 12-month rule), partners' capital, tax basis of purchased and contributed property (sources/irs-partnership-basis.md), payroll taxes, rounding on returns, return line items for tax categories (sources/irs-tax-lines.md) |
Public domain (17 U.S.C. §105; IRS.gov's content policy) | Vendored verbatim: sources/irs-*.md, sources/us-public-domain-status.md |
| File formats: Intuit (QuickBooks Online bank CSV, QuickBooks Desktop IIF), ECMA-376 Office Open XML, Microsoft Excel limits, Avery label sheets | What ledger-import reads and writes: bank/card CSV layouts and signs, IIF journal entries, how XLSX stores numbers and Excel's 15-digit precision, asset-label sheet geometry (Avery 5160) |
© Intuit Inc.; © Ecma International; © Microsoft; © Avery Products Corporation | Cited with short quotes, URLs, and hashes: sources/intuit-bank-csv.md, sources/intuit-iif.md, sources/xlsx-numbers.md, sources/avery-5160.md |
| FASB Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) | Authoritative US GAAP: cash flows (ASC 230), revenue and principal vs agent (ASC 606), foreign currency (ASC 830), credit losses and aging (ASC 326), property and depreciation (ASC 360) | © Financial Accounting Foundation | Cited by paragraph with short quotes only (in rules.md; the paragraphs read, with where and when, in sources/fasb-asc.md and below) |
| FASB Concepts Statement No. 8, Chapter 4 (2021) | Definitions of the five elements (it replaced Concepts Statement 6) | © Financial Accounting Foundation; non-authoritative | Cited with short quotes only |
| Textbooks (OpenStax Principles of Accounting, Vol. 1) | Conventions no standard states: normal balances, closing-entry mechanics, straight-line depreciation arithmetic | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (incompatible with this repo's license) | Cited with short quotes and attribution only |
| Convention or decision | Where no authority speaks: aging bucket edges, cent rounding among members, closed-period locks | — | Stated as CONVENTION or DECISION, with who decided and when |
How to read a SOURCE line
SOURCE: Pacioli ch. 36 (sources/pacioli-1494.md); IRS Pub. 583 (sources/irs-records.md)
SOURCE: ASC 830-20-30-1 (cited, rules.md B-3)
SOURCE: DECISION (the owner, 2026-10-13)
SOURCE: CONVENTION (QuickBooks aging); nearest authority ASC 326-20-55-38 (illustrative)
A rule whose only source is CONVENTION or DECISION is a candidate for a human to confirm or overturn; nothing else is.
Rules added later never lock out older books
When a rule is tightened (a check added to a command), books written
before it must still open. Journal replay and the SQLite cross-check read
history through the engine's replay_* commands, which skip checks added
later; new commands go through the checked ones. Pinned by
books_written_under_older_rules_still_open (ledger-store).
Vendoring rules
- Public-domain texts are copied verbatim (whitespace normalized), each with its URL, retrieval date, and the SHA-256 of the retrieved file, so anyone can check the excerpt against the original.
- Copyrighted sources are cited by paragraph, quoted briefly, never copied.
- When an authority changes (the IRS revises a publication; a statute is amended), add the new text beside the old with its effective date. Rules that depend on dates (1099 thresholds) must say which text applies when.
- Rules that change with the law are registered in
crates/ledger-core/src/rules.rswith the years they are known for and a review date. Past what it knows, the engine refuses rather than guesses; from the review date, the MCP digest and the viewer flag the rule. Whoever updates one (human or agent) vendors the new official text here, extends the rule, and sends the change upstream: a pull request at https://github.com/swaits/wanderbooks (best), or an issue.
Open: sources we could not verify
Read on 2026-10-13 through Deloitte's free DART roadmaps, which reproduce
ASC text: ASC 230-10-45-16 and -28, 326-20-55-37/38, 606-10-25-23, 45-2,
55-37/38, 830-20-30-1. Read directly in the ASC basic view on 2026-10-14
(sources/fasb-asc.md): 360-10-35-4, 340-10-05-2/4/5, 210-10-45-1/2/5,
230-10-45-7/10/12/13/14/15, 606-10-55-36 through 55-38. Read on
2026-10-20 where public sources reproduce the Codification (EY's FRD on
the statement of cash flows, July 2026; FASB ASUs 2016-15 and 2016-18;
Deloitte's public DART Roadmap): ASC 230-10-10-1, 45-1, 45-4, 45-5,
45-8, 45-9, 45-12(c), 45-13(c), 45-14(a), 45-15(a)/(c), 45-16(a)/(b),
45-17, 45-24 to 45-26, 45-28 to 45-31, 50-3 to 50-8, and 830-230-45-1;
each checked again against the same sources in the P3 review (numbers,
pages and wording hold). Open: 105-10-05-1 to 05-3, read only in their
2009 text (ASU 2009-01, and as Wiley GAAP 2020 quotes them); their
current wording is unconfirmed. Also open (P3 surface review, 2026-10-21): ASC 230-10-45-15(f) (debt
issue costs, cited by B-14 rule 11) is in neither list above; ASC
606-10-25-31, 25-32 and 55-20 (B-16's over-time method) are not yet read;
B-15 rule 6 cites ASC 250 with no paragraph; B-17's 606-10-55-39 is in
neither list. Each is to be read in the ASC basic view and listed in
sources/fasb-asc.md before it is relied on further.