{"id":608674,"date":"2026-04-16T19:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T19:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608674\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T19:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T19:58:08","slug":"i-tried-out-charlie-the-cras-ai-powered-chatbot-heres-how-it-went","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608674\/","title":{"rendered":"I tried out Charlie, the CRA\u2019s AI-powered chatbot. Here\u2019s how it went"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

You can ask the CRA chatbot tax questions without getting too personal.Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

It\u2019s T-minus 14 days to the tax season deadline, and it\u2019s been interesting to see how artificial intelligence is showing up in all things taxes this year.<\/p>\n

Mostly, I\u2019ve heard rumblings from tax preparers about extravagant mistakes made by clients who\u2019d quizzed the likes of ChatGPT on business expenses, their tax situation and what tax breaks they might be able to claim.<\/p>\n

A recent survey<\/a> by an online bookkeeping company found most tax preparers are regularly running into errors linked to AI slop. And those mistakes are created more work for them \u2013 up to 10 additional hours per month for some.<\/p>\n

Another, hopefully more productive, use of AI: The Canada Revenue Agency is relying on machine learning and AI to sift through large amounts of data to help it decide whose tax returns to audit.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also a friendlier face to the CRA\u2019s use of AI: Charlie the Chatbot. If you\u2019ve been on the CRA homepage lately, you\u2019ve likely seen him: A cute little round robot face floating on the bottom-right corner of your screen.<\/p>\n

Clicking on Charlie initiates a chat in which you can ask tax questions without getting too personal. The bot is not equipped to handle sensitive personal information, so don\u2019t type in, say, your social insurance number, date of birth or address. <\/p>\n

I recently asked it how I should declare royalty income. I published a book a few years ago, and the publisher sends me an annual T5 slip (the same slip you\u2019d get from a bank for, for example, interest you\u2019ve earned from a savings account).<\/p>\n

I\u2019d assumed that money belonged in the \u201cother employment income\u201d line of my return. But when I switched tax software this year, the new program confidently slotted it under \u201cinterest income,\u201d which left me perplexed.<\/p>\n

I asked Charlie about it, and, let me tell you, I was impressed. The answer was that the income should be declared as \u201cother employment income\u201d if it was the product of my work or an invention; under \u201cself-employment income\u201d if there were expenses associated with it; or under \u201cinterest and other investment income\u201d if neither of the two previous scenarios applied. The bot also linked to CRA pages where I was able to fact-check the information. <\/p>\n

Still, Charlie\u2019s debut has been rocky. Last year, I heard from several users that it could only handle the most basic tax questions. And when the Auditor General tried it out as part of a larger probe<\/a> of the CRA\u2019s call centres, they found that it only answered two out of six trial questions correctly. <\/p>\n

So here\u2019s my question for you: If you\u2019ve tried Charlie, what was your experience like? Let me know by taking this short survey<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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Subscribe to the On Money newsletter<\/p>\n

Are you reading this newsletter on the web or did someone forward the e-mail version to you? If so, you can sign up for On Money here<\/a>.Erica\u2019s personal finance reading list<\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, financial products comparisons site Ratehub.ca calculated that the average monthly cost of owning a car works out to $1,373, which includes auto loan payments. But with gasoline prices \u2013 and, possibly soon, interest rates \u2013 going up, car ownership could get even more expensive this year.<\/p>\n

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ICYMIGlobe and Mail stories from the last few days<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: You can ask the CRA chatbot tax questions without getting too personal.Sean Kilpatrick\/The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,1397,276,277,49,48,73504,1412,73501,131,73507,73502,73505,73506,73503,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-608674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-appwebview","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-high-interest-saving","15":"tag-newsletter","16":"tag-onmoneynewsletter","17":"tag-personal-finance","18":"tag-personal-finance-advice-canada","19":"tag-personal-finance-canada","20":"tag-personal-finance-newsletter","21":"tag-personal-finance-planning","22":"tag-saving-strategy","23":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}