Chatbots for Tax?

Remember not all that long ago when the idea of AI coming into our lives was full of wonders, scares, frights, and worries? Well, that didn’t last long, did it?

In a short time, AI has now become present just about everywhere. And personally, I must admit to being very impressed and more than a little surprised at how well it can perform some tasks. With that being said, however, there are many things that I would not yet be comfortable trusting it with. And certainly, taxes are one of them.

Tax law is complicated due to a lot of push and pull from competing sides and ideologies and is always open to change. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing in itself, but it means you want to be sure that when you have questions, you get correct answers. So that makes it a little disconcerting that TurboTax and H&R Block have added AI chatbots that do not seem to be doing the best job according to a recent article in the Washington Post.

It’s one thing to have some chatbots, say in customer service, that do not give the answers you want. Those you can shrug off and move to another tactic without any loss but a little bit of time. With taxes, though, you could be looking at something could result in a smaller refund, end in someone paying more than they had to, or potentially even open the possibility of an audit.

A tricky piece here is that it is difficult to really address how to handle this. These tax chatbots are being made by trusted providers, so it is not some wild act for someone to believe in it. So how should we travel these waters? Well, I will admit to stealing a bit from the Post article, but what it says about this is simple and makes complete sense – AI is great for when there are no real-life consequences. And there is not even debate here about whether or not this is a real-life situation.

In conclusion, I am not going to be alarmist and say don’t ever use these AI bots to get an answer. I will, however, say that these answers should not be taken as gospel. If you are going to use one, you at least also owe it to yourself to do another search elsewhere and confirm the answer.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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