Tax season is in full swing, so spare a thought for the nation’s accountants who are dealing with a growing problem: AI tax slop.
Driving the news: A recent survey of 500 Canadian accountants and bookkeepers found that 44% of respondents who encountered AI mistakes spend up to three hours a month correcting these mistakes, The Logic reported, while another 38% spend as many as 10 hours correcting them.
Accountants face AI-generated errors like misinterpretations of business expenses and payroll goofs, as well as people using AI to challenge their advice.
Why it’s happening: While the Canada Revenue Agency told The Logic that it updates its website so that AI tools can easily scrape information from it, chatbots still often provide generalized advice based on outdated information or policies from the U.S. tax filing system.
Like many average Canadians (us included), bots have a tough time grasping tricky concepts like attribution rules between spouses and RRSP withdrawal sequencing.
Likewise, a U.S. study testing the business accounting chops of LLMs found that they might start strong, but struggle with longer-term tasks and handling complex data.
Why it matters: This survey data only captures tax forms that actually made it into the hands of accountants. Considering that just a third of Canadians pay a pro to prepare their taxes, there’s a lot of uncaptured data about AI errors from folks who file taxes themselves.
Our take: Ultimately, most Canadian tax filings aren’t super complex, so AI systems might be able to handle them. That said, TurboTax exists, and the federal auto-filing system that’s being piloted with lower-income Canadians might one day be a preferable alternative.—QH