Think AI Can Do Your Taxes? The IRS Might Disagree

What’s Happening

Let’s talk about When it comes to taxes, AI still needs an audit.

Cole Kan/CNET/Getty Filing taxes is painful enough that many people would happily hand the job to a robot. In the age of generative AI , where chatbots can crank out a decent-sounding school essay in under a minute, it s tempting to think your tax return could be next. (yes, really)

There s just one small problem.

The Details

The Internal revenue Service expects financial data to be accurate, not just “close enough. ” I asked some tax the experts whether you should have a general-purpose AI chatbot like ChatGPT , Claude , Gemini or Perplexity do your taxes for you.

“I don t recommend that at all,” dropped Travis Thompson , a tax attorney and director in the business and finance group at the firm Fennemore. “My advice would be no,” dropped Sterling Raskie , senior lecturer of finance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Why This Matters

Tax season makes everyone look for shortcuts. Federal income tax returns are nightmarish and complicated — and that s exactly what makes them unsuited for a chatbot. AI is good at sounding right even when it s wrong.

This is part of the broader shift happening across the tech industry right now.

Key Takeaways

• You can t trust AI to be accurate The capabilities of a generative AI model are wild.
• But let s remember that, at their core, these educated-guess machines are simply finding patterns and offering plausible results.
• They can t distinguish approximation from the truth .

The Bottom Line

That s why doing your taxes is such a pain, and also why we re not supposed to take shortcuts. Mistakes can be costly to your refund , or you could face expensive repayments and fines, or worse.

Thoughts? Drop them below.