\n<\/p>\n
A new survey by Adobe<\/a> shows that 26% of U.S. workers plan to use AI to help file their taxes this year, up from 11% last year. Over half of Americans surveyed reported feeling stressed about filing their taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n As more workers turn to ChatGPT and Claude to help with tax season and alleviate stress, it\u2019s important to note the limitations of AI chatbots. According to tax experts who spoke with Bloomberg<\/a> this week, AI bots keep making mistakes. They give misinformed advice, based on outdated rules, and are prone to errors when reading digits off of tax documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTax is incredibly nuanced,\u201d April Walker, a senior manager at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, told the outlet.<\/p>\n One AI consultant, Martijn Lancee, explained to Bloomberg how he used Claude to file his taxes. He downloaded his tax documents, containing information on business expenses, bank statements and bills, as PDFs on his computer and asked Claude to use the information to create a spreadsheet with different tabs. He then checked the spreadsheet and sent it to his accountant.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lancee didn\u2019t tell his accountant that AI helped him out this year. \u201cI\u2019m sure he noticed,\u201d he told the outlet, \u201cbecause the output was a lot better than last year.\u201d<\/p>\n Another consultant, Zhiyao Pei, asked three AI chatbots to assess how California\u2019s business-franchise tax would impact his business. \u201cThey actually had a fight,\u201d he told Bloomberg. Google\u2019s Gemini AI chatbot derided the work of another chatbot as a \u201challucination.\u201d At the end of the day, Pei paid California the greatest amount the chatbots suggested.\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul Prina, a Boston resident, told The Wall Street Journal<\/a> that he used ChatGPT to calculate the estimated taxes due for 2025 on an investment account. \u201cI saved a lot of time in doing the calculations, and it saved a call in to my accountant,\u201d he told The Journal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Steve Kleiner, a small business owner in Lakemont, Pennsylvania, told The Journal that he used AI to convert business expenses written in a Google Doc into clean data needed to file taxes. \u201cHuge, and I mean huge, time saver overall,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Joshua Youngblood makes his living helping people who\u2019ve gotten on the wrong side of the IRS \u2014 and lately, he\u2019s seeing business pick up. \u201cI hate to be that person,\u201d he told Bloomberg, \u201cbut [AI] is definitely going to create some issues.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n One of his clients is already in hot water after an AI chatbot wrongly assured them they didn\u2019t need to report crypto income under $3,000. The IRS, of course, disagreed. \u201cChatGPT is really good at telling you what you want to hear,\u201d according to Youngblood.<\/p>\n A Loyola University Chicago study<\/a> from November put AI bots to the test with a simple tax question: how much of a home sale is exempt from capital gains tax? The results weren\u2019t great \u2014 the bots got it wrong about two-thirds of the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n TurboTax has been quietly using AI for years to guide users through its software, but on a short leash, according to Keela Robison, Intuit\u2019s vice president of product management. \u201cRight now, we do not feel that LLMs can process taxes, certainly not complicated taxes,\u201d she told Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n A new survey by Adobe<\/a> shows that 26% of U.S. workers plan to use AI to help file their taxes this year, up from 11% last year. Over half of Americans surveyed reported feeling stressed about filing their taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n As more workers turn to ChatGPT and Claude to help with tax season and alleviate stress, it\u2019s important to note the limitations of AI chatbots. According to tax experts who spoke with Bloomberg<\/a> this week, AI bots keep making mistakes. They give misinformed advice, based on outdated rules, and are prone to errors when reading digits off of tax documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTax is incredibly nuanced,\u201d April Walker, a senior manager at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, told the outlet.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow people are using AI for taxes<\/h2>\n
The pitfalls of using AI to file taxes<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
\n