{"id":631941,"date":"2026-04-27T13:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T13:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631941\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T13:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T13:22:10","slug":"can-you-trust-the-cras-ai-powered-chatbot-we-put-it-to-the-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631941\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you trust the CRA\u2019s AI-powered chatbot? We put it to the test"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The deadline for filing taxes in Canada for 2026 is April 30. As the big day approaches, Globe Advisor and Globe Investor have teamed up to offer advice on how to maximize returns, find credits and avoid an audit. The full series can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Canada Revenue Agency is looking for ways to make it easier for Canadians to get answers to their tax questions without dialling into one of its call centres. Its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot is meant to do just that.<\/p>\n

First launched during the 2025 tax season, the bot works similarly to ChatGPT, Gemini and other chats backed by large language models. It looks like a round robot face floating in the bottom right corner of some CRA webpages. Click on it, and you\u2019ll open up a dialogue box where you can type your tax queries.<\/p>\n

Yes, AI can help you with your taxes \u2013 if you know how to use it<\/a><\/p>\n

The bot has evolved significantly over the past year. It can now handle questions about individual taxes and benefits, as well as businesses, trusts and charities. But while other AI tools draw from across the web to answer your tax questions, the CRA\u2019s bot only relies on government-provided information.<\/p>\n

Still, the CRA cautions that the bot\u2019s answers may not be \u201cfully accurate.\u201d Taxpayers use information generated by the chat at their own risk, warns<\/a> one of the agency\u2019s web pages.<\/p>\n

So, how well does the bot work?<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail asked a tax expert to put it to the test. Joseph Devaney is a chartered professional accountant and director of financial education platform Video Tax News. He quizzed the CRA\u2019s bot on a variety of questions about individual and business taxes, with topics ranging from basic to complex. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it went.<\/p>\n

Overall, \u2018it\u2019s pretty good\u2019<\/p>\n

All in all, Mr. Devaney\u2019s assessment was positive. The bot provided helpful answers to a number of questions, and it makes for a much faster alternative compared to calling the CRA, he said.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Devaney also spotted some issues. Often, the bot gave incomplete answers. For example, on a question about whether a newcomer to Canada has to file a tax return, the chatbot listed the main reasons why that might be the case, such as having to pay taxes and wanting to claim benefits.<\/p>\n

But the bot missed a few other circumstances in which a new immigrant might have to file, such as having sold property or investments. <\/p>\n

It can make mistakes and give different answers to the same prompt<\/p>\n

During nine conversations Mr. Devaney had with the bot about different tax topics, the bot gave one answer that was plainly wrong. <\/p>\n

Mr. Devaney told the chat he had a corporation with a tax year ending on March 31 of this year and asked when he had to file a tax return and pay taxes for the business. The bot had the filing date right but the payment deadline wrong.<\/p>\n

When The Globe gave the bot the same prompt a few minutes later, the chat produced the right answer for both the filing and the payment deadline.<\/p>\n

Analysis: This will be a make-or-break tax season for the Canada Revenue Agency<\/a><\/p>\n

CRA spokesperson Nina Ioussoupova said by e-mail that the chatbot may generate different responses even when it receives the same prompt because it conducts a different real-time search for answers every time a question is asked.<\/p>\n

Ms. Ioussoupova also said the CRA was unable to independently reproduce the error. In its testing following The Globe\u2019s inquiry, the bot provided accurate responses.<\/p>\n

The bot struggles with vague questions<\/p>\n

One of the trickier questions Mr. Devaney asked the chatbot was: \u201cI heard that being on title of my parents\u2019 bank account may mean that I have to file some kind of tax return. Is this true?\u201d<\/p>\n

If your name is on an asset that doesn\u2019t really belong to you \u2013 for example, if you are listed on a joint bank account with your elderly parents to help them manage their bills \u2013 you may have created what\u2019s called a bare trust. And because of recent rule changes, these informal arrangements sometimes require filing a trust return.<\/p>\n

Mr. Devaney wanted to see whether the bot would bring up the new issue of trust reporting. It didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

By comparison, when Mr. Devaney put the same question to ChatGPT, he received an answer that included a mention of the new rules on bare trusts.<\/p>\n

Ms. Ioussoupova said prompting the CRA\u2019s bot with broad questions that lack context can result in incomplete answers.<\/p>\n

She added that the agency is working on getting the bot to ask clarifying questions when it receives these generic prompts. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn this particular example, the chatbot could ask whether the individual is the true owner of the account or controls the income as the beneficial owner, allowing it to provide a more accurate and complete response,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Explainer: Income taxes 101: How to file in Canada before the April 30, 2024 deadline<\/a><\/p>\n

The bottom line<\/p>\n

The bot can make mistakes or fail to give necessary context, but so can CRA call-centre agents, Mr. Devaney said. <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s likely easier to spot an incomplete answer in an AI chat than in a customer-service conversation over the phone, he added. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re calling somebody, you\u2019re not sure what they\u2019re looking at and they might have missed or skipped over something that was important and not realized it,\u201d he said. \u201cWhereas if you\u2019re using this chatbot, you can see everything in front of you and you can dig down where you want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, as with any AI tool, Canadians should take the CRA\u2019s chatbot\u2019s answers with a grain of salt, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cProbably more than a grain,\u201d he added. \u201cA pebble of salt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The deadline for filing taxes in Canada for 2026 is April 30. As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,2741,61],"class_list":["post-631941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-pf-ca","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631941","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=631941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}