Should you trust AI to do your taxes?

We’re using AI to fix our grammar, streamline our to-do lists, or find recipes. Here’s what to keep in mind when using AI to help do your taxes.

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No language on earth has ever produced the expression “as enjoyable as filing your taxes.” This annual chore is the pits. It’s slow, frustrating work that requires organization, math skills, and the ability to decipher meaning from the U.S. tax code. People will jump on pretty much any solution that makes filing quicker, easier, and less painful–including giving AI a crack at it.

Recent survey research from Qlik found that nearly 11% of taxpayers have used or plan to use a consumer AI system (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini) to help them prepare their 2025 tax returns. But how trustworthy are these AI systems when it comes to something as sensitive as your taxes?  It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that studies have shown AI is not so great at math.

If you’re considering letting your AI assistant give you some tax assistance, here’s what Claude himself won’t tell you.

Tax pros are using AI

While it may seem outlandish to consult AI for anything tax-related (at least, that’s my visceral reaction as a card-carrying, middle-aged luddite), the IRS itself has been using artificial intelligence for several years.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the IRS has set up AI systems to increase operational efficiency (i.e., automatic meeting summaries), help with audit selection for tax compliance and fraud detection, and provide taxpayer services, such as chatbots.

But it’s not just the IRS using AI. Professional tax preparers are also embracing AI. Andy Phillips, vice president of The Tax Institute at H&R Block explains how this technology is changing the industry:

“Tax pros spend a significant amount of time on data collection and data entry,” Phillips says. “By embedding AI into workflows, we can extract data from documents, pre-populate returns, and automate repetitive tasks behind the scenes. That has the potential to free our tax pros to focus more on explanation and guidance.”

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