Hacker News

AI has a lot of potential but trusting it with my taxes? Its a big NO. I want to make sure that someone takes accountability if anything goes wrong.

Did this last year and models were already almost good enough to do this without me checking the results, i still did though, and still saved many hours.

This year with such vast capability jumps it's not even a question

No, but I do look forward to all the stories of people who did. Should be interesting

Nope; I use a Lisp thing I made myself. You model the tax return form fields using the macro language. They are linked together reactively like cells in a spreadsheet with dynamic updates and history viewing; e.g. if you change some value, you can see how it impacted every single field, so you can optimize registered retirement fund contributions and such.

I've not had a mistake flagged on my returns for the past bunch of years thanks to this, so I'm sticking to it.

The only problem is the yearly churn. I begin by copying last year's document (basically a Lisp file defining fields and their values). This has to be edited not just for values but for changes in the tax return form.

The form fields are tagged with a section symbol, which corresponds to the document; I can produce a report which basically indicates what to fill where in the paper form.

I could integrate that with electronic filing; the Canada Revenue Agency has some sort of program you register to gain access to that. (This is distinct from the "e-file" system for online filing for individuals that I don't use.) I likely won't because I believe in the paper forms. I did the work to figure out the taxes, someone should open an envelope and read handwriting

This system actually reduces the filing because I can skip the various field copying and intermediate calculations, focusing on just getting the data into the "payload" fields. It's the least time-consuming part of the process to the point where I have a sense that I'm done when the numbers are prepared, and the rest is just scribbling (cue scene from 1980s Amadeus movie). Especially that since I double check the figures, and the calculations are done by machine, I never have to do the entry twice.

Now, if something comes up in the tax code affecting me, I'm going to ask AI. E.g. "am I eligible to claim such and such". No to actually manipulate figures for me or fill something. I check every hallucination to actual documentation from the government.