Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the OpenTaxRate API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the OpenTaxRate API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fopentaxrate.com%2Fopentaxrate" | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fopentaxrate.com%2Fopentaxrate" | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with OpenTaxRate API.

Look up the combined US sales tax rate at a street address, split into stateRate, localRate, and the individual taxes that make it up

Pass an address as one line or as state, street, city, and zip fields, with an optional date for a past or future rate

Add taxability for what was sold with product codes such as food.grocery, software.saas, or service.professional.legal

Classify a plain-words item description against the product codes when calling with an API key

GET STARTED

Start building with OpenTaxRate API

Explore with Jentic One

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use OpenTaxRate API for, with concrete tasks.

★ AI agent quoting tax on an order

An AI checkout or invoicing agent working through Jentic searches for 'sales tax rate at an address', loads getRate, and calls it with the buyer's street, city, state, and zip plus a code for what was sold. The response gives the general rate and a taxability entry for the code, such as special_rate for groceries or exempt, so the agent can apply the right rate. If you use a key, your own Jentic One instance injects it at call time.

Call GET /v1/rate with street '400 Broad St', city Seattle, state WA, zip 98109, and code food.grocery, then return rate and the taxability entry for food.grocery

Rate on a specific date

Tax rates change, and refunds or audits need the rate that applied when a sale happened. GET /v1/rate accepts a date in YYYY-MM-DD form and defaults to today when it is absent, so a reconciliation job can look up the rate for each historical order's address and date.

For each order, call GET /v1/rate with the shipping address and date set to the order date, and flag orders whose charged rate differs

Explaining an address match

Addresses near jurisdiction lines can be ambiguous. With include=trace the response shows every point a geocoder returned and the point used, and with include=regions it lists the published transit, special district, and tax areas the address falls in. A 422 ADDRESS_NEEDS_CONFIRMATION tells the agent to ask for a better address rather than guess.

Call GET /v1/rate with the one-line address and include=trace,regions, and report the match method and the special districts listed

Key Endpoints

2 endpoints — the opentaxrate api returns the sales tax rate at a us street address, built from the states' own published data.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/v1/rate

Sales tax rate at an address

GET

/v1/coverage

States covered and how addresses are placed

GET

/v1/rate

Sales tax rate at an address

GET

/v1/coverage

States covered and how addresses are placed

Why Jentic?

What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.

Setup

Wiring OpenTaxRate by hand means choosing between keyless per-IP limits and a key sent as a bearer token or x-api-key header, and handling 422 address-confirmation and 429 Retry-After responses. Through Jentic you install once, import OpenTaxRate from the API Directory, add your key once if you use one, and your agent calls it.

Permission scoping

OpenTaxRate exposes two read operations, so a rule bounds your agent by operation: allow the rate lookup, the coverage list, or both. The address travels as query parameters, so a rule decides whether your agent may look up rates, not which addresses.

Credential isolation

If you use an OpenTaxRate key, it is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'sales tax rate at an address' or 'are groceries taxable here', and Jentic returns the getRate operation with its input schema, including address, zip, date, and code, so the agent calls it directly.

FAQs

Specific to using OpenTaxRate API through Jentic.

What authentication does the OpenTaxRate API use?

Per its OpenAPI spec, a key is optional: calls may be made with no key, with the key as a bearer token, or with the same key in the x-api-key header. Without a key, lookups are limited per IP address, and the describe parameter needs a key (otherwise the API answers 403 KEY_REQUIRED). If you use a key, Jentic stores it in your own instance and attaches it at call time.

Can the OpenTaxRate API tell me whether a product is taxable?

Yes. Pass one or more codes to GET /v1/rate, such as food.grocery, food.prepared, software.saas, or service.professional.legal, and the response adds a taxability entry per code with a status such as taxable, special_rate, exempt, or conditional. An unknown code returns a 400. With a key, describe classifies a plain-words item description against the codes.

What are the rate limits for the OpenTaxRate API?

The OpenAPI spec does not state numeric limits. Without a key, lookups are limited per IP address, and a 429 with RATE_LIMITED or KEY_LIMITED asks you to wait the Retry-After seconds. Keyed lookups draw on credit, with a 402 NO_CREDITS when it runs out. See https://opentaxrate.com for current limits.

Is there an OpenTaxRate MCP server?

You don't need an MCP server to give your agent OpenTaxRate. Jentic connects it directly from the API Directory: import it, add your key once if you use one, and your agent calls the rate and coverage operations on demand.

How do I look up a sales tax rate through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'sales tax rate at an address', load the getRate operation, and execute GET /v1/rate with either address as one line or state, street, city, and zip. Read rate, stateRate, and localRate from the response; rates are decimals, so 0.1055 is 10.55%. To run it on your own infrastructure, install Jentic One from its GitHub repo.

Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the OpenTaxRate API?

Yes. The API has two read-only operations, so write a rule that allows GET /v1/rate alone for a checkout agent and it can look up rates but nothing else you have not chosen, and each lookup is logged. Neither operation changes any data.

OpenTaxRate API

AI ReadinessFoundational (C+)60/100

See full scorecard

Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyFinanceTaxbearer, apiKey2 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Look up the US sales tax rate at a street address from states' published data, broken into state and local parts, with taxability for product codes like food.grocery or software.saas.

Use for: What is the sales tax rate at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC?, Get the sales tax rate for this Seattle address on a past date, Check whether groceries are taxable at this address, I need the state and local split of the sales tax at a ZIP+4

Not supported: Does not file returns, record transactions, or cover taxes outside the US. Use for looking up US sales tax rates and product taxability at an address only.

The OpenTaxRate API returns the sales tax rate at a US street address, built from the states' own published data. Give an address as one line or as state, street, city, and zip, optionally with a date, and it returns the combined rate as a decimal split into the state's part, the local part, and the individual taxes that make it up, along with how the address was matched. Product codes such as food.grocery or software.saas add taxability for what was sold, and a plain-words description can be classified against those codes when a key is supplied. A coverage endpoint reports, state by state, how addresses are placed and which data is loaded.

Jentic One on Github View OpenAPI Document

Show dimension breakdown

100

Foundational Compliance

Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.

Grade: A+Signals: 4

98%

Lint Results

Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.

100%

Resolution Completeness

Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.

100%

Specification Validity

Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).

100%

Structural Integrity

Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.

Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility

Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.

Grade: B+Signals: 4

17%

Example Density

How richly the API is illustrated with examples.

100%

Example Validity

Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.

62%

Response Coverage

Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).

100%

Tooling Readiness

Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.

AI-Readiness & Agent Experience

Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.

Grade: D+Signals: 4

49%

Description Coverage

Coverage of descriptions across API elements.

Error Standardization

Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.

100%

OperationId Quality

Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.

40%

Summary Coverage

Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.

Agent Usability

Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.

Grade: A+Signals: 1

94%

Complexity Comfort

Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.

Security

Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.

Grade: CSignals: 1

55%

Authentication Strength

Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).

AI Discoverability

Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.

Grade: FSignals: 1

31%

Descriptive Richness

Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.

Connect the OpenTaxRate API to your agent

Capabilities

Start building with OpenTaxRate API

Use Cases

Key Endpoints

Why Jentic?

Related APIs

FAQs

OpenTaxRate API

Jentic AI Readiness Score

OpenTaxRate API

Foundational Compliance

Lint Results

Resolution Completeness

Specification Validity

Structural Integrity

Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility

Example Density

Example Validity

Response Coverage

Tooling Readiness

AI-Readiness & Agent Experience

Description Coverage

Error Standardization

OperationId Quality

Summary Coverage

Agent Usability

Complexity Comfort

Security

Authentication Strength

AI Discoverability

Descriptive Richness