Oh, the anxiety of tax season. With the deadline to file your taxes just around the corner, TaxGPT, an award-winning AI tool, can probably help.
Like many Canadians, you likely have questions, and that’s where TaxGPT comes in. Described as “Canada’s AI tax advisor,” the chatbot uses AI to generate answers to any questions you may have about filing your taxes based on public information from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). And the best part: it’s completely free.
Creator Paul Craig is an Ottawa-based web developer with some experience in the federal public service. He has worked with the CRA and the Canadian Digital Service and helped build part of the COVID Alert App.
TaxGPT creator Paul Craig (Supplied)
While working on a project with the CRA, Craig visited volunteer-run clinics that file taxes for people with modest incomes. Although the people who came in had all the information they needed, he said they weren’t “confident enough to do it on their own.”
“CRA considers them to have ‘simple returns,’ but from their perspective, tax rules are complicated, and it is easy to make a mistake,” Craig told Daily Hive in an email. “However, once they are sitting across from a volunteer, it takes about 10 minutes to file their taxes.”
According to Craig, that’s where the idea for the online tool came from.
“I spent one Saturday afternoon at the National Arts Center testing ChatGPT with questions about tax filing and found that it could be pretty helpful with general advice,” he recalled.
The project was launched in January 2023, and a new version was launched this year.
“TaxGPT’s overall goal is to make taxes friendlier and simpler and not something that you have to pay a specialist to do for you,” Craig said.
“TaxGPT is not going to be able to help you with complex corporate taxes, but for most tax filers with simple returns, TaxGPT is a pretty good resource. Doing taxes should be simple and straightforward, and TaxGPT tries to embody that.”
So how does it work?
Type any tax-related question in the chatbox, and TaxGPT pulls answers from multiple sources, such as the CRA website and Wealthsimple, and provides relevant links for more detailed information.
TaxGPT
TaxGPT
Craig said the public response has been great, with people reaching out to him to tell him how much it helped them with their taxes. There’s also a “thumbs up/down” button that allows users to leave feedback.
“Good feedback is always nice to see, but whenever anyone leaves negative feedback, that’s an opportunity for me to improve the service for the next person,” he said.
Although the AI tool is only a year old, it won a “Social Impact” award at the Beyond Boundaries Global Festival in Barcelona for “demystifying tax filing with a compassionate digital ally.”
The CRA has also been interested in how the tool has been performing and the kind of questions people ask—information Craig has been happy to share with them. However, he doubts that an AI system like TaxGPT is “on the CRA’s roadmap” since the AI models are still new.
“Other AI tax tools exist in this space, but TaxGPT is completely free, works great for casual users, and it’s got the cutest mascot,” he said.
Despite the success of his work, he said AI systems created to understand and navigate complex government rules are “always going to be a band-aid solution.”
“The fundamental problem lies in the inherent complexity of government regulation which drives people to look for workarounds, like using TaxGPT or paying to have your taxes filed,” explained Craig.
“So while AI can help people understand and navigate complexities that exist, the government should really be focused on opportunities to undo some of that complexity so that people don’t need to rely on AI assistants.”