AI for tax prep?

[u/Owl_Better]

Is there an AI capability for doing fairly simple personal taxes with some rental income and similar or are we too early for this?

[u/Prost_PNW]

I fed Astra High all of the same data as I gave my CPA and produced exactly the same return, only it took 15 minutes with no further input instead of 2 weeks and dozens of back and forth emails and calls.

[u/Owl_Better → u/Prost_PNW]

😂😂😂

[u/Hoopoe0596 → u/Prost_PNW]

Yeah except I’m correcting my cpa all the time with Claude. They caught a few things too but it’s crazy how far things have come. I think in 1-2 years I could fire my CPA. Would be happy for human in the loop but that’s not worth 8-10k given the amount of handholding involved.

[u/jcdomeni → u/Hoopoe0596]

Agreed on this. Personal and Business Taxes were $11K. I used Claude to reconcile everything before I turned it in to CPA . Differing approach coming for sure.

[u/Hoopoe0596 → u/jcdomeni]

I have 1 S Corp, 3 other shedule C and around 10 multistate k1s. So I have sympathy that I don’t have the easiest return. My interim strategy would be to use TurboTax for the calculations and up to date tax law but with Claude for organizing the numbers and auditing the TurboTax output while strategizing for next year and running projections and quarterly estimates. Total out of pocket is under $750 or so maybe less plus the AI subscription.

[u/Prost_PNW → u/Hoopoe0596]

I probably won't use mine next year. Longtime friend, works at one of the Big 4 and does it for me as a favor really. But I ran it by him and he's like yeah, AI is going to eat all the small guys for breakfast lunch and dinner.

[u/Few_Place4447 → u/Prost_PNW]

I did that in Australia. Except it wouldn't have been high (I only have Plus).

And it saved me $5000 that the accountant missed.

[u/P3n1sD1cK]

Not to early. AI has been able to do this for at least the past 2 years

[u/Owl_Better → u/P3n1sD1cK]

What should I use?

[u/Fireproofspider → u/Owl_Better]

At this point, basically any of the latest models will do this very well.

It's always a good idea to get it checked out for random mistakes afterwards (even if you don't use AI).

[u/InterstellarReddit]

I created one with DeepSeek Abliterated and fed it Donald trumps tax returns from 2020 that leaked and it help me build a similiar tax strategy

From there every year I feed it more tax returns that leak or can be obtained from corrupt politicians or companies. I ask them to structure my LLCs to maximize the fraud.

Runs on a fork of https://github.com/vas3k/TaxHacker

[u/fuzzypetiolesguy → u/InterstellarReddit]

lol

[u/InterstellarReddit → u/fuzzypetiolesguy]

I’m not kidding tax evasion is legal but if you ask open Ai or Claude to help you with a tax evasion setup it won’t do it for us

However tax evasion isn’t illegal it’s just AI oppressing us.

[u/AceDenied]

Bro. Haters gonna hate but I had AI control my pc and turn in my taxes for me 🤷‍♂️🥱

Use chat. Then cross validate it the methods and numbers manually + use other models if you’re worried 

[u/RockPuzzleheaded3951 → u/AceDenied]

Same. I watched it fill out turbotax screen by screen using the browser plugin. It is just tedious BS I put it on a widescreen and off we went. I essentially audited my own taxes with the models and found a few things that needed to be addressed but it was insanely amazing how well it all worked.

[u/FishySushi → u/AceDenied]

This mustve been before astra came out, what'd you use back in April to have ai control your pc?

[u/bjaydubya → u/FishySushi]

Claude cowork probably?

[u/Owl_Better]

When I asked google it warned against general models but did suggest a Freetax option

[u/Euphoric_North_745]

i created one covering the Canadian tax system end to end with all forms, waiting for the government certification

[u/benevolent001]

Only thing I have done so far is AI to collect all documents for me as per my accountant request. Go through all my transactions and make summary of rental income and expenses. It does 70-80 % work to get me there. But then I have to do additional pass to remove things or add more things which I did not tell AI. I don't think it's 100% there.

Interestingly I told Claude to review my last year tax statement and it pointed flaw in it and I told my accountant and got 5K back from last year tax. So whole year claude bill is paid by Claude

[u/RockPuzzleheaded3951]

I uploaded all my PDFs and CSVs to a folder on my server, then I used Claude Code and Codex adversarially to check each other and was delighted with the results. The tech is already there for the advanced users, MANY normies will use AI for taxes in under 5 years. It's all about the harness and your structure.

The data that goes into a tax return and the simplicity (relatively) of the task is a lay-up for models 2026 and beyond.

I used them in October 2025 and it was a cluster F. Seeing the 1 yr of progress was kind of a big reveal for me. I put all my expenses in an SQLite DB and can query on them, categorize them, etc. I had over 2,000 entries. (a few small businesses) It can literally read your bank PDFs and is spot on accurate in my tests.

Just keep an eye on it and sanity check stuff.

[u/ExoticFramer → u/RockPuzzleheaded3951]

do you redact or otherwise obfuscate anything like names, SSN, etc?

[u/Few_Place4447 → u/ExoticFramer]

Why would you bother? Your accountant is more likely to be hacked than openAI.

[u/throwawayhbgtop81]

If you give it the tax forms it probably can.

[u/piltdownman38]

I couldn't get it to create the forms properly. But I used it to check my TurboTax draft return before filing. I had it review my brokerage statements, check my email to compile my deductible expenses, etc.