{"id":220927,"date":"2026-03-07T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/think-ai-can-do-your-taxes-the-irs-might-disagree\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T08:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T13:15:11","slug":"think-ai-can-do-your-taxes-the-irs-might-disagree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/think-ai-can-do-your-taxes-the-irs-might-disagree\/","title":{"rendered":"Think AI Can Do Your Taxes? The IRS Might Disagree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think AI Can Do Your Taxes? The IRS Might Disagree<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/thinking-of-using-ai-to-do-your-taxes-think-again\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-07 05:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.cnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Cole Kan\/CNET\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n

Filing taxes<\/span><\/span>\u00a0is painful enough that many people would happily hand the job to a robot. In the age of generative AI<\/span><\/span>, where chatbots can crank out a decent-sounding school essay<\/span><\/span>\u00a0in under a minute, it’s tempting to think your tax return<\/span><\/span>\u00a0could be next.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There’s just one small problem. The Internal Revenue Service expects financial data to be accurate, not just “close enough.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AI <\/p>\n

I asked some tax experts whether you should have a general-purpose AI chatbot like ChatGPT<\/span><\/span>, Claude<\/span><\/span>, Gemini<\/span><\/span> or Perplexity<\/span><\/span> do your taxes for you. The answer was clear.<\/p>\n

“I don’t recommend that at all,” said Travis Thompson, a tax attorney and director in the business and finance group at the firm Fennemore.<\/p>\n

“My advice would be no,” said Sterling Raskie, senior lecturer of finance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.<\/p>\n

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 very good at sounding right even when it’s wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, if you can’t afford to hire a trusted, trained human to help with your taxes, there are some things generative AI can be useful for during tax season.<\/p>\n

You can’t trust AI to be accurate<\/h2>\n

The capabilities of a generative AI model are impressive. 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<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The numbers on your tax forms are expected to be correct, not simply ballpark. 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\u00a0refund, or you could face expensive repayments and fines, or worse.<\/p>\n

“It’s important to keep in mind that if an AI chatbot provides incorrect guidance and a person uses it to file an incorrect tax return, they (the person) are responsible for infractions or violations, which could include penalties,…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think AI Can Do Your Taxes? The IRS Might Disagree https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/thinking-of-using-ai-to-do-your-taxes-think-again\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-07 05:00:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/79a980fb24acfbdff287c4b7c69c6ccaf0f8f438\/hub\/2025\/09\/26\/320327b4-9309-419f-b72f-450ae0a6eca1\/ai-cnet-4.png?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-220927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-generative-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220929,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220927\/revisions\/220929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}