You can ask the CRA chatbot tax questions without getting too personal.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
It’s T-minus 14 days to the tax season deadline, and it’s been interesting to see how artificial intelligence is showing up in all things taxes this year.
Mostly, I’ve heard rumblings from tax preparers about extravagant mistakes made by clients who’d quizzed the likes of ChatGPT on business expenses, their tax situation and what tax breaks they might be able to claim.
A recent survey by an online bookkeeping company found most tax preparers are regularly running into errors linked to AI slop. And those mistakes are created more work for them – up to 10 additional hours per month for some.
Another, hopefully more productive, use of AI: The Canada Revenue Agency is relying on machine learning and AI to sift through large amounts of data to help it decide whose tax returns to audit.
But there’s also a friendlier face to the CRA’s use of AI: Charlie the Chatbot. If you’ve been on the CRA homepage lately, you’ve likely seen him: A cute little round robot face floating on the bottom-right corner of your screen.
Clicking on Charlie initiates a chat in which you can ask tax questions without getting too personal. The bot is not equipped to handle sensitive personal information, so don’t type in, say, your social insurance number, date of birth or address.
I recently asked it how I should declare royalty income. I published a book a few years ago, and the publisher sends me an annual T5 slip (the same slip you’d get from a bank for, for example, interest you’ve earned from a savings account).
I’d assumed that money belonged in the “other employment income” line of my return. But when I switched tax software this year, the new program confidently slotted it under “interest income,” which left me perplexed.
I asked Charlie about it, and, let me tell you, I was impressed. The answer was that the income should be declared as “other employment income” if it was the product of my work or an invention; under “self-employment income” if there were expenses associated with it; or under “interest and other investment income” if neither of the two previous scenarios applied. The bot also linked to CRA pages where I was able to fact-check the information.
Still, Charlie’s debut has been rocky. Last year, I heard from several users that it could only handle the most basic tax questions. And when the Auditor General tried it out as part of a larger probe of the CRA’s call centres, they found that it only answered two out of six trial questions correctly.
So here’s my question for you: If you’ve tried Charlie, what was your experience like? Let me know by taking this short survey.
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ICYMI
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