Should you trust AI to do your taxes?

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.”

But just because the tax pros are using AI doesn’t mean it’s an automatic slam dunk for taxpayers to do the same. The IRS and tax preparation businesses are using AI to do the slow, tedious, and repetitive work that doesn’t necessarily need a human’s oversight. That’s a scalable use of artificial intelligence.

Individual tax returns, on the other hand, require specific, personalized information, which is a granular use of AI. Those are very different ways of using this technology.

Beware confidently wrong answers

Two-thirds of the taxpayers using consumer AI on their 2025 returns are using it to supplement whatever software or tax professional help they used last year. But Qlik found that 33% of those using AI were not seeking any other help.

This is a concern, according to Phillips. “AI can be incredibly helpful. But if it’s unguided, it can also be confidently wrong,” he says. “And when it comes to taxes, that’s a risk most people shouldn’t take.”

But despite the well-reported phenomenon of AI hallucinations (remember the glue on pizza recommendation?), taxpayers aren’t especially worried about AI’s habit of making stuff up.

Qlik’s research found that privacy is the primary concern keeping taxpayers from adopting AI as a tax filing tool. Forty-eight percent of taxpayers who refuse to use AI cite data exposure as the biggest obstacle to adopting this technology, compared to the 16% who worry most about AI’s accuracy.

How to use AI for tax preparation

There is a place for consumer AI tools in tax preparation–as long as you remember that artificial intelligence is only as good as the information you feed it.

“Our tax attorneys, analysts, and researchers operate year-round to dissect every detail of new legislation and anticipate challenges,” Phillips says. “Generic AI without a trusted foundation could be a pitfall. People should use caution with AI that’s not grounded in real tax expertise.”

But taxpayers don’t necessarily take this to heart. The Qlik survey found that taxpayers considered AI as most helpful for these tasks:

• Identifying deductions and credits
• Reviewing the completed return for errors and omissions
• Asking general tax questions (such as deadlines, forms, and basic rules)
• Helping fill out sections of the tax return
• Estimating the refund or amount owed
• Organizing documents or creating checklists

While some of these tasks are well within the purview of any general AI tool, others may not be something you want to leave up to a bot that makes up fake books by real authors.

Which means you have to double check any tax prep that you allow an AI to help you with. Skipping over that step could leave you vulnerable to the IRS AI that handles audit selection.

AI won’t save us from tax time

Although more Americans are exploring AI as a tax-filing tool, we’re still a long way from having general artificial intelligence systems file our tax returns for us each year.

That’s partially because AI is designed as a tool for organizations to scale their operations. The IRS uses AI for operational efficiency, tax compliance and fraud detection, and low-contact taxpayer services. Tax preparation businesses like H&R Block use AI to automate data entry so their tax pros can spend more time one-on-one with their clients. Using AI to file an individual tax return requires a much different approach to artificial intelligence.

Taxpayers should also be wary of AI’s penchant for hallucination. These tools can and do make up “confidently wrong” answers, which could be a serious problem when it comes to filing your taxes.

AI is only as good as the information it’s trained on, which means a consumer tool is unlikely to have the knowledge base necessary to ensure a correct return. So if you do use an AI tool for help with your taxes, you will need to double check its work before filing. “AI can support how people file taxes, but the best use is combining it with real expertise,” Phillips says. “Otherwise, you’re just automating guesswork.”

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