diff --git a/packages/cli/src/commands/setup/tailwind/tailwind.js b/packages/cli/src/commands/setup/tailwind/tailwind.js
index 956f4414aaef..742093bbf102 100644
--- a/packages/cli/src/commands/setup/tailwind/tailwind.js
+++ b/packages/cli/src/commands/setup/tailwind/tailwind.js
@@ -143,30 +143,28 @@ export const handler = async ({ force }) => {
             'Tailwindcss config already exists.\nUse --force to override existing config.'
           )
         } else {
+          // A gotcha here is that `yarn tailwindcss init` can generate
+          // tailwind.config.js in either BASE_DIR or BASE_DIR/web, depending
+          // on what cwd is
           await execa('yarn', ['tailwindcss', 'init'])
 
-          // When the `yarn tailwindcss init` command is issued a
-          // tailwind.config.js file will be generated in cwd(). (cwd() will
-          // be either BASE_DIR or BASE_DIR/web depending on where the user
-          // runns the command from.) By only passing the filename (and not a
-          // fully qualified path) to the fs.* commands below node will look
-          // in cwd() for the file.
+          const tailwindConfigPathCwd = path.join(process.cwd(), 'tailwind.config.js')
 
           // opt-in to upcoming changes
-          const config = fs.readFileSync('tailwind.config.js', 'utf-8')
+          const config = fs.readFileSync(tailwindConfigPathCwd, 'utf-8')
 
           const uncommentFlags = (str) =>
             str.replace(/\/{2} ([\w-]+: true)/g, '$1')
 
           const newConfig = config.replace(/future.*purge/s, uncommentFlags)
 
-          fs.writeFileSync('tailwind.config.js', newConfig)
+          fs.writeFileSync(tailwindConfigPathCwd, newConfig)
 
           /**
            * Later, when we can tell the vscode extension where to look for the config,
            * we can put it in web/config/
            */
-          fs.renameSync('tailwind.config.js', tailwindConfigPathWeb)
+          fs.renameSync(tailwindConfigPathCwd, tailwindConfigPathWeb)
         }
       },
     },