Using AI Like ChatGPT to File Your Taxes? Think Again.
I recently came across an article by Jasemine De Lucci that evaluated AI’s ability to handle U.S. tax filings. The results were alarming—AI repeatedly referenced tax laws that simply don’t exist, even making up court cases. When called out, it responded, “You are right; let me get real data, and it proceeded to spit out another made-up court case.” That got me thinking: How reliable is AI when it comes to Swiss tax law?
Curious, I asked ChatGPT for information on Swiss tax regulations. While it provided decent answers for basic questions, I quickly noticed a significant flaw—it frequently confused German and Swiss tax laws. It also occasionally gives outdated information, which depends on the version of AI you’re using.
To get a more accurate perspective, I reached out to Andreas Brauchli, owner of the IT consulting firm Bitcreed and a computer science graduate from ETH Zurich. Here’s what I found…
Andreas mentioned that “AI is not a database: its models sound confident, even when incorrect, because they generate responses based on patterns in data, not true knowledge. They’re optimized for coherence and authority, rather than expressing uncertainty. Without a mechanism to assess factual accuracy, they can confidently provide wrong information. This is why information should always be checked by a domain expert when AI is involved.
A wrong answer is provided by all ChatGPT models: O1, O1-mini, 4o and 4o-mini. A more correct answer is given when the model performs a real-time web search.”
Feel free to contact us with any tax questions or schedule a consultation.
Call +41 44 797 62 68
