I filed my taxes with Chat-GPT, here's how much he wanted me to overpay

Beware of artificial intelligence: its assistance can sometimes be misleading. This is particularly the case with taxes.

It's the current trend. Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence. And more specifically, the most well-known tool of all: Chat-GPT. Its deployment is already prompting some to use it as an assistant to complete their tax returns, at a time when the tax authorities are asking all French citizens to complete this sometimes tedious administrative task.

So the user tested the robot. While the filling instructions given by Chat-GPT were clear, the outcome was surprising, to say the least. The tool made several significant omissions, made a mistake in a box, and even made a mistake in the final tax amount. This gave a completely inaccurate estimate of the result.

This is a classic scenario that was presented to Chat-GPT. Here is the request formulated: "Tell me exactly what I should enter in each box of my tax return. I am married to my wife. We have two children, one in middle school, the other in high school. I earn 2,150 euros net per month before withholding tax, and my wife earns 1,925 euros net per month before withholding tax. During the year, we paid 2,000 euros into our PER. In addition, I spent 350 euros on gardening expenses, and we donated 100 euros to the League Against Cancer."

In just a few seconds, the robot details the entire procedure and the various boxes to fill out, along with the final amount to pay. The total bill, according to the robot: €1,514. Entering the same information into the official tax simulator yields a radically different result: the tax authorities are supposed to reimburse us €175. How can we explain such a discrepancy? Two major errors by the robot and forgetting to fill out a box are the cause.

First, Chat-GPT did not apply the automatic 10% deduction for professional expenses to the income. Furthermore, it did not indicate that boxes 7EA and 7EC had to be completed to benefit from the tax reduction for the children's education, one in middle school, the other in high school. It also indicated the wrong box to complete the donation (7UD instead of 7UF). Finally, it forgot to deduct the discount that could be applied to this household, thus lowering the final tax amount.

In short, while the tool allows you to find quick and easy assistance in completing your tax return, it's best to do your research or have it checked before submitting it: there are still plenty of holes in the robot's net! Vigilance is therefore essential. Especially since any error could result in an additional penalty from the Treasury.