Comment by treetalker

21 days ago

>> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes

Imagine if the government would just tell everyone how much they owed and obviated the need for effing literal artificial intelligence to get taxes done!

>> respond to emails

If we have an AI that can respond properly to emails, then the email doesn't need to be sent in the first place. (Indeed, many do not need to be sent nowadays either!)

12 comments

treetalker

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techpression  21 days ago

Yeah the whole filing taxes thing is an epic XY-problem. Governments can make this as easy as a digital signature, there’s zero need for an agent of any kind.

Actually most of the things people use it for is of this kind, instead actually solving the problem (which is out of scope for them to be fair) it’s just adding more things on top that can go wrong.

  • treetalker  21 days ago

    Seriously. The best solution is not having the problem in the first place. Something something Tao Te Ching.

lxgr  21 days ago

If a user chooses to reach out about an issue that an AI agent can completely solve, why should they not be allowed to do so via email? I much prefer it over all other support communications channels.

PurpleRamen  21 days ago

How can government know how much you owe them when they don't know all your tax deductibles?

  • mrguyorama  21 days ago

    You being personally ignorant of this specific argument which gets litigated every single time this comes up but only by Americans because most other countries have zero difficulty doing exactly that is not a valid argument.

    91 percent of American filers take the standard deduction. The IRS already has all their information, already knows how much they withheld, already knows what they owe back. For all these people, TurboTax is just filling in 10 fields in the standard form.

    "All your tax deductibles" is irrelevant for the vast majority of the country, and always has been.

    The 35 million remaining americans who do itemize are free to continue using this old system while the rest of us can have a better world.

  • treetalker  21 days ago

    We could also ask how the government could later tell someone they improperly deducted something! The government can either use that same means to tell taxpayers in advance, or else we could figure out a superior taxation system that wouldn’t require these steps.