In more detail:
- every line of every form gets a YAML representation which includes the source text, a data type, and an expression built from a small set of lean atoms, plus a citation pointing to the exact location of the rule in the original official document.
- underneath the yaml layer there's a lean formalization of the atoms showing that they behave as specified, that all comuptations use only the allowed atoms and operations, etc. There's also a typescript evaluator that's used to cross check the lean for agreement, so we have the arithmetic represented two ways.
The critical failure point for an LLM-produced formalization like this is the interpretation of the form text. Since I'm not a tax lawyer and don't intend to become one, this is an explicitly owned weakness and one I've structured the project around. Publicly available tax calculators (PolicyEngine, UsTaxes, OpenTaxSolver, etc.) are used to cross check derived numbers from this system. Mutation testing ensures the test suite is robust against bugs and arithmetic errors. Interpretations are cross checked by different model families (Claude, GPT, Deepseek). Etc.
The idea is to derive confidence from the formal properties of the system itself, and to allow theoretical future users of such a system to derive confidence in the interpretation of specific forms by making it easy to cross check line-level formalizations against the source documents.
There's a lot more detail in the (alas, Claude-authored) README. When I have time I'm going to write my own version of the README expressing my vision of the project, but I'm not there yet.
And to be clear: my vision here isn't "have an agent do your taxes", it's to have agents build a hardened and thoroughly verified deterministic tool that can help you navigate the (somewhat bewildering) forms and instructions decision tree when filing your own taxes.
(If a painter knew that the camera was coming out I would not want them to throw their canvas away)
1. found errors, e.g. where I used the incorrect exchange rate (and managed to work out how I had made that error, which I was impressed by)
2. found items which would appear to be errors except for context it did not know
3. flagged areas where it disagreed with me as to the correct tax treatment, but accepted that the law is ambiguous (and in some cases I preferred its interpretation after additional research and in other cases I did not)
4. flagged areas where it disagreed with IRS guidance, and only acknowledged said guidance after I provided links to it
5. provided highly inaccurate estimated tax calculations, and not been able to fix its estimates even when challenged
So my takeaway is that it is a very useful tool for tax, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it is not good enough to dump all your paperwork into and expect a shiny return you don't need to check. (Possibly it is if you just have a W-2 and no other substantial income, but I can't speak for that scenario.)
Same situation as you. I have a local accountant in the country I'm in plus my US accountant. Claude/ChatGPT have been a huge help for checking, explaining, and finding issues. They also found websites with pertinent information that Google did not, which surprised me.
I think what helped is giving it 100+ pdf and csv documents of my full situation so it knew everything about me and could cross-reference with all my bank statements.
I had it prepare an analysis and then found a professional to confirm everything and then handle doing the amendment.
Definitely useful as a second pair of eyes.
Try this, it uses a tax engine as the backbone and provides feedback for Claude if it goes off the rails. Albeit it doesn't support every tax scenario.
(And as I said to another commenter, I think it would be advisable in this thread for people to expressly acknowledge or disclaim any interest in or prior experience with any particular product)
it's the most ai-native tax experience for US citizens abroad
(It would also help to know if you had a financial interest in or prior experience with this company)
What do you mean by "cost you $20K"? That your tax liability was calculated by the accountant to be higher than it actually should have been? Or that the accountant calculated your liability too low, which was caught and billed by the IRS?
In the first case, you can still file for a refund within 3 years (I'm omitting some technical details), but in the latter case, as mentioned by others, you still owe the tax whether it was correctly reported on your original return or not.
The real issue is that accountant most likely has a track record of those kinds of mistakes - but you have no info on other clients. So you weren’t as informed at the time you chose them vs the new one.
I think the red flag should have been when he printed out all my tax returns and made me pick them up in person, and didn't even send a digital copy.
I am not aware of setups available to me that would transfer liability onto accountant.
So in either case I am taking liability.
(also, I am pretty sure that if corporation loses 10 millions over accountant making bad decisions, they are not going to recover that funds either)
And there was no real path to recovering funds, except small part, after long court case.
At least they were able to fire them without severance pay.
https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2022/Nov/do-you-trust-your-tax-...
I started my career fixing the mistakes that my clients' former tax advisers made. It looks like the next generation of tax lawyers will get to do the same except this time the former advisers will be llms.
Pretty sure the LLMs could implement tax calculations better than the average accountant, were they given the rules.
Most calculations are trivial.
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/new-bill-calls-for-irs-...
There is also an IRS form (14157) to report a return preparer complaint, which of course does not include an option to report a faulty AI.
Has anyone verified their figures to see if they hold up?
I've found it so far more effective for preparation than for planning/advice.
I've got a plan to feed the laws and rules and instructions into the machine before the prompts - is RAG still cool? Maybe I should small-language this?
I downloaded 1700 of my transactions and use AI to build an app for it, so I can analyze the transactions and make sure that everything is properly categorized. It used to take me whole day because of the Quickbooks. It took me less than an hour to go through all the transactions.
EDIT: good point that paying accountant does not ensure avoiding it
wonderful, you made a good point that make me dislike situation even more
The plan now is to retrieve the current year's tax forms then have an LLM compare them to stored versions from last year, and look for variances (e.g. new field, new form requirements, etc) all of which an LLM would excel at (whilst basic math it historically did not).
- someone who hates me personally will get access to it (see case where someone put their ex-spouse on no-fly-list etc)
- leak my private info via new version of LLM was trained on it
- sell it to everyone interested (maybe sold after their bankruptcy)
- give it to NSA and whoever else
from obvious ones
I'd have honestly never been able to do it myself - its just too tedious.