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Comment by jgbuddy | Hacker News Reader

A literal example is that I can use AI to file my taxes instead of spending a weekend and hundreds of dollars to have an accountant do it for me. It costs me like $5. that 245$ delta is the value of that output to me, as long as I am confident it is correct.

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Seems to be a thing in the US to need specialised software, an accountant or AI to file taxes.

In most of Europe individuals at least don't need any of that. I'm in France and it's just a connection to a government run website to enter a few figures, takes less than an hour most of it is already pre-entered (salary etc), the main thing to add manually is charitable donations.

If you're running a business then yes an accountant can be good (or be required depending on the legal form of the business) but not for individuals.

In the US you don't need software or an accountant either. People have been convinced it is hard, but the reality is taxes are basic math for most people. It isn't hard to copy the few figures from a couple forms and add them up, the look things up in a chart. It is tedious, but not hard. That said, I use the software anyway because once in a while I make a human mistake and those are annoying when the IRS catches latter.

There are a few people who have a complex situation who need an accountant. Most do not, but since they have never looked at what is really involved they don't realize what is going on.

Taxes are one of those things that seem difficult and people reach for tooling or expertise without trying initially without, but are pretty easy to do yourself just filling out the forms.

It really depends your situation. If you’re entrepreneurial, self employed, others things become messy fast, and you cannot just know what you need from filling forms

Luckily IRS makes this information available for you:

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Part of the value of paying an accountant is that you can get representation in case you are audited. Though I guess you did say you were confident it is correct.

This also sounds like rich people problems. Vast majority of people with a W-2 take the standard deduction.

I think that to sum things up, we will have to wait until we can evaluate the cost of the mistakes. You could be lucky but you could also end up with a very negative output value in the longer time frame.

I did my taxes this year too with 5.5 and 3.1

Otherwise normally costs around $800 to do, because I have a small business too.

> as long as I am confident it is correct

Are you? Does it cost you extra (time or money) to be?

Yes, and they were accepted. A year or two ago I would have been less confident but now almost UX is happy to cite sources.

Not speaking to the wisdom of filing taxes using LLMs, but just FYI (assuming US here) taxes being accepted doesn't mean they were correct. It just means the IRS hasn't found anything major wrong (e.g. SSN used on multiple returns). Even being approved isn't a guarantee, an audit could come later.

Even if an audit never comes they could be incorrect.

Audits often find incorrect in favor of the person audited as well. If you are not audited that is a bad thing as you have no idea if things are wrong, and it could be costing you a lot of they are wrong.

For sure.

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