Let’s be honest: taxes are confusing. Even if you’re pretty financially savvy, there’s always that one question that sends you spiraling into a late-night Google rabbit hole. And now that artificial intelligence (AI) tools are everywhere, a new question pops up right alongside your tax bracket confusion: Which AI can you actually trust with tax questions?
To cut through the noise, we asked a certified public accountant (CPA) who deals with real-world tax questions all year long to weigh in. Below is what they had to say about the best AI to ask your tax questions — and what to watch out for before you hit “enter.”
Also here are the tax mistakes that trigger audits, according to ChatGPT.
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Best AI for Tax Q&A: ChatGPT
Arthur Putzel, CPA and managing partner of Trout Daniel & Associates, recommended the paid tier of ChatGPT specifically because it handles “structured prompts” well and will stay organized when you ask it to.
“[The] quote I tell our team to use as the opening instruction [is] ‘Act like a U.S. CPA preparing a client memo. Ask me only the missing facts first, then list 1) likely tax treatment, 2) IRS forms, 3) audit flags, 4) what I should document,” Putzel explained.
If you’re unsure, he said to give two treatments and what fact changes the answer. This is how you turn the AI from a trivia engine into an intake-and-decision tool.
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Second-Best AI: Perplexity Pro
Putzel also recommended Perplexity Pro. “It’s fast at producing a ‘what’s the governing rule, plus what’s the current threshold’ style answer when you need to sanity-check numbers (limits, phaseouts, depreciation lives) before you model anything,” Putzel said.
“Give me the current-year U.S. tax rule, thresholds and the exact list of inputs I must know to apply it; then give three common mistakes and how to avoid them in documentation,” Putzel said to use as a quote to get useful output from the AI chatbot.
“I use it the way I’d use a sharp junior analyst: quick orientation, then I do the judgment,” he added.
He said to “force” the AI to separate “what it feels like” from “what it is,” which is where most tax mistakes start.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: The Best AI To Ask Your Tax Questions, According to a CPA
