Ideas built to travel.

REA turned reverse engineering into a prompt. Citrini saw the fiscal chapter coming in February. The license is vanishing. The margin is not.

A scenario, not a forecast. It starts with a reverse-engineering tool, runs through agents paying agents, and ends with a tax authority asking for an invoice that no longer exists.

The 2028 scenario hands its government two bills. One taxes compute. One pays a royalty on output. Score them, and the lesson is about timing, not rates.

The models are closing. The applications are opening. Both moves send the margin to the same address, and no AI tax on the table has that address.

Gates is right that the tax code rewards replacing people. Congress now has a bill. Both meter the wrong thing.

It is a scenario, not a headline. It is also the stress test every payroll-dependent state should run now.

A robot tax targets the prop. An agentic-margin contribution targets the value that scales when payroll no longer does.