As rapidly as generative AI is advancing, the tech is not yet in a place where a bot can simply do your taxes for you. But services like TurboTax and H&R Block are utilizing the technology to help users answer questions about deductions, declarations, and credits, among other things. That means AI has as much control over your tax filings as you’re willing to give it.
Per some reports, you may want to set restrictions on how much advice you seek from bots when preparing to file your taxes, as AI assistants are reportedly struggling to provide accurate answers to many of the questions they are being asked. The Washington Post even went so far as to prepare an actual test for H&R Block’s AI assistant, claiming that it provided questionable answers to about 30% of the posed questions and had little understanding of the IRS’s guidelines concerning cryptocurrency.
Such numbers would seem to bolster the concerns some users have about using generative AI during tax prep, particularly as filing your taxes with inaccurate information can lead to an IRS audit, financial penalties, or worse, and there’s little chance that auditors will be giving free passes due to AI misinformation or hallucinations. To that point, H&R Block bosses acknowledged to WaPo that the technology is still in the early stages of development and are encouraging users to double-check any advice provided by AI assistants.
