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1 in 5 Americans to use AI to help file taxes
(www.kxan.com)
Oh God, that's so fucking stupid.
Gotta keep the auditors busy!
There are like 100 for the whole country. No one gets audited, statistically speaking. It's why you've never learned anything about taxes from your parents or friends. They don't know either. People pay people at HR block who don't know about taxes either to file. No one gets in trouble because the only people who know tax laws work for the very wealthy. Or at the IRS where there are about 100 of them to 300m of us.
The top ways people plan to use AI is to help answer filing questions, find deductions or credits, and review returns for mistakes.
If you can't afford a professional, these don't seem particularly unreasonable. I certain wouldn't recommend feeding all your info into chatgpt etc but for a simple filer, asking an LLM for explanations or possible deductions seems fine.
Not everyone has access to the same resources that I do, so I try to picture it from others perspectives.
If you can’t afford a professional, you are probably not in a place where you would have enough itemized deductions to match the standard deduction
Have fun with that audit.
Like I said, not everyone has the same resources I do...
But this doesn't seem worse than googling questions and not everyone can spend hours waiting to talk with the Irs/Cra etc.
It just seems that sometimes folks are so determined to be anti LLM that they refuse to see how it could ever help anyone.
"Googling" used to get you to the needed IRS documentation, but now, with the help of Gemini you're just being lied to.
If you need tax help, call your local library, they often have tax help. Also if it seems like a tax dodge, don't take the deduction. Don't outsource your brain to an LLM. You've done your taxes before without a GPT you can do it again.
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Why are we filing and paying taxes anymore? They’ve stripped most things that help the common citizen including things like the SEC that allow the president to pump a stock ticker
Because my employer garnished my wages to pay taxes, and if I dont file my taxes, the federal will keep my refund.
Why did you incorrectly fill out your W4?
No American should be getting a tax refund if they've properly filled out their W4 using the instructions on the form.
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I wonder if I counted...
So I did the tax prep using a free offer from TurboTax. Everything seemed traditional.
Then, at the end it generated an AI summary of my return. I didn't have a choice, it just did it. I have the "unhelpful" feedback because:
- Despite saying it was "explaining" the numbers and why, all it did was just list the numbers from the fairly straightforward table right above the AI response in a more awkward form, not explaining anything.
- Further, despite the seemingly easy task of "Take a table of figures and repeat them in prose", it still screwed up and messed up and of the figures that all our had to do was repeat verbatim.
So AI was forced into my tax prep and did nothing substantive (thank goodness) and flubbed the cosmetic role it tried to play.
Why does nobody use FreeTaxUSA?
I actually had not used TurboTax before. And as a result I could do state and federal free with them this year, so it was cheaper than freetaxusa.
But won't be using it again next year, it was fine but not particularly impressive compared to usually cheaper alternatives.
I do! And also got my dad to switch to it this year 🙌
It's always been good, and in the past few years they have been adding scanning for various documents, the lack of which was my only complaint about it before.
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Turbox Tax worked hard to get AI some revenue.
If you didn't do the multi-step downgrade of your service (have to downgrade two or three times to get to the free version) then you might've counted. The AI doesn't do anything, but it starts as a way to justify charging you like $140. It'll default you paying for it even if its unused.
Use FreeTaxUSA or OnLine Taxes. Much more affordable online tax tools.
its free under certain AGI, or if you make alot money, might want to consider other alternatives,.
FreeFillableForms works regardless of your income or if you have other unconventional things to claim. It's just a bit more manual than some of the other apps, but does support e-File. I find the instructions are pretty easy to follow though, especially if you can reference your previous year's return.
yikes
Hey LLM. I'm thinking of deducting my Corvette as a business expense for my landscaping business, is that a good idea?
What a creative way to lower your tax burden! This totally makes sense and you can be confident that your decision will be well received.
(Others can take the LLM tone better than me, and I don't have the patience for LLM verbosity).
Mine will 100% tell me I’m an idiot for that.
So if we do this, and the AI fucks up, can we just blame the AI and not get in trouble? Isn't that why it exists?
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What could go wrong?
It's probably more of a replacement for Google than anything. IMO for stuff like this it isn't different than asking a forum and as long as you know that there's little room for fuck ups.
I don't know if cashapp uses AI or not to file their "free" tax returns. I know that prior to using it I had to agree to let them use any and all information for marketing and advertising. Nope!
Then I got an offer from someone to use TurboTax for state and federal for "free" but they spend plenty to lobby the government not to have free filing. Also nope, doubling down, because of the comment here by @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
I Fucking hate turbo tax. They've gotten so intertwined in our tax system from all their lobbying. I couldn't find my w2 for an employer I quit in July, after some research I found out my former employer just automatically gives turbotax all their w2s. I didn't even want to do my taxes with them because I know about their bullshit but had to log in so I could get my w2 from turbo tax to take it somewhere else. I bet they get a lot of people that are just like "my w2 is here I'll just do it with them".
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Why don't they just wait for the government collapse like everyone else. /S
I mean, a lot of tax stuff is automated. Mine are pretty straightforward so turboTax handles a huge chunk of the work...
Purpose-built tax software is not the same as the random word generator.
Neither the article, nor source make a distinction as to whether it's a general purpose LLM or purpose built software.
So it really depends on the question that the poll asked, which as far as I can tell, is not shared.
Judging by the source, they likely asked "do you plan to use AI".
But given that we're talking about the general public, I guarantee most people using AI for their taxes are just asking chatgpt.
I don't know the organization so can't speak to the source or their methodology but they do note:
The top ways people plan to use AI is to help answer filing questions, find deductions or credits, and review returns for mistakes.
All of which seem pretty reasonable. If you don't have the money for a professional, at least checking with something that is right more often than not with some basic questions seems perfectly reasonable.
From the reactions above, it seems people are assuming they're just asking chatgpt to do all their taxes, which doesn't appear to be the case.
Both Turbotax and Taxact have sections for questions on every section while filing, you can even talk to an advisor while filing. Using AI to review or figure out deductions is just being lazy.
Most people take the standard deduction, and for us, it's usually as easy as copying a few numbers from the boxes on a W-2 form into a website.
However, for some people/jobs it makes more sense to do itemized deductions, in which case, it gets more complicated.
That said, using an LLM for it is fucking stupid
I take it you've never helped someone who struggles with bureaucracy and government forms.
I've helped folks with tenancy, tax and applications. Usually, the issue behind the given issues is that everything feels very intimidating and the forms/support document are written in "government-ese".
If there's a tool that can help explain this stuff, without a multi hour phone wait, I'm all for it. Not everyone has a resource like myself that they feel comfortable asking. Especially when, there's a sense of shame in being an adult who cannot navigate these things, yeah, I fully understand and can appreciate why 1/5 would want to ask an LLM for help.
You'd be surprised with the stumbling blocks people face. Just because you know how your deductions etc are supposed to work does not mean most people do. I find it's really useful to consider things not from my perspective but from the least fortunate.
They still won’t know after asking an llm either.
Over 50% of Americans can barely read
Just use online file from H&R Block, people. In most cases it's free when you decline the upsells.
Good to see only 5 Americans are paying tax. That's a great way to protest misuse of tax dollars
Last year I asked the HR block ai chat bot thing a question and it got it wrong.
i saw on a sub someone used it, and it gave wrong info back.
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this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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