written by amelia rodriguez / a.k.a amy

published june 20, 2026

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I greeted the barista with a warm smile that hid desperation. It was in the afternoon of a brisk autumn day, I was home alone, and I was repeating a routine that I did every week, while I lived in the city of Columbus, Ohio.

I had rode the downtown-bound 102 bus with an optimistic mind that yearned for connection. I lived in Columbus for just over one year, and in that time, I had made no friends. My routine was as cyclical as it gets: wake up at 7:00, take the bus to work, try to not collapse from stress and anxiety and boredom, and then take the bus home, leaving barely three hours – sometimes four if I was lucky – of free time at home, before I had to go to sleep. It was no small miracle that I was able to hold myself together for most of these days. This is the ruthlessness, the reality, of the capitalistic society we live in. I wanted to fight that. I wanted to beat that. In even the smallest way. I wanted people, and I wanted connection. I wanted friendship. What was I alone, if not a crumbling pile of tears that formed together to resemble the shape of a person?

I ordered my usual – a Dante's Paradise. Espresso, with a shot of Frangelico, and I began my routine inside the cafe. Peoplewatching, and the eavesdropping that often accompanies it, is my lifeline when I have little else to draw life from. When I am anxious, lonelier than ever, and overtaken by the incapability of reaching out and begging and crying for help, the next best thing I can do is to observe the friendship of others happening right in front of me.

When I picked up my drink, I walked to the other room of the cafe. Bookshelves lined the walls, and upon the small stage was a group of musicians setting up the speakers for their show later that night. I had left a book on one of the shelves from a previous visit, and went to grab it.

The other room of this cafe was a precious space to me. I came to realize that this room is where other queer people my age would congregate. Students from the nearby Ohio State University, coming together to study, talk, gossip, organize, laugh, hug, and cry.

I sat down on my usual spot, in front of the windows that graced my back with the sun's late afternoon glow. The glow greeted my back with the usual, as did the sip of ill-advised alcohol that entered my mouth at the table. I shyly cracked open my book, without any intention of giving the words of the pages real focus. Then, in the corner of my eye, my focus, if there was any, became transfixed on something, someone, else.

A girl my age, trans flag pins proudly placed on her OSU laptop bag, set her things on the table to my left. She put a pair of cat-ear headphones over her head, and sat down, pulling open a Canvas tab on her laptop which was tilted juuuuuuuust enough so that I could glance its detail from the corner of my eye as I did my best to pretend to read a book.

My mind raced. I was desperate. I was alone. I wanted friends. I wanted to meet the people in the community I resided in for over a year without having taken a part in it at all, a transplant in every sense of the word. I wanted to talk to this girl. I wanted to say hello. I wanted to have a fun conversation with her. I wanted to compliment her bag. I wanted to compliment the video game stickers she had on her laptop. I wanted to compliment the confidence of the smile that graced her face without fail even as she did something as mundane as read the passages of the story she was studying for school.

i wanted to say hi.

And then someone walked up to her and said hi. From the main room of the cafe, someone approached the girl's table. The girl took off her headphones and greeted her friend with a wide smile, and waving her right hand comically fast. The girl got up and hugged her friend, then sat back down as the friend remained standing. The friend was just stopping by but figured the girl would be here, so they wanted to say hello. The two of them excitedly talked for a moment about meeting back up at the Ohio Union later. The friend walked away, and the girl went back to reading on her laptop, but without putting her headphones back on.

My mind raced. She had left her headphones off. Her persistent smile didn't waver after her friend left. The seat opposite to her was empty. She begun to focus less on her schoolwork and glance at her phone every few minutes. I knew that there was no better time to meekly say hello to the most approachable and friendly person in my vicinity. I knew that there was no better opportunity to immediately make it clear that I wasn't being weird I swear to god I wasn't being weird I swear to fucking god that I was only taking note of every little thing I noticed about you in that moment because I wanted to be able to talk to you and have a conversation and maybe make the first new friend I had ever made in-person since high school and I know you noticed me staring at you I know I caught your eye looking back at mine for approximately one ten septillionths of a second but i saw it nonetheless and i probably wasn't actually being very subtle about it but you didn't seem to mind so i just kept doing it and then i knew all i had to do was say hi and say that i'm new in town and wanted to get to know people.

So, naturally – logically, even – I got up,

put my book back on the shelf,

turned around,

and rushed to the bathroom

where i sobbed quietly.

then

i cleaned myself up

and rode the bus back home.

Log Entry #1

Date: 20 JUN 2026

UK to ban social media for under 16s

I want my kids to know that I, as well as their mother, and others our age, were some of the last to have it good. My childhood, outside of the home, was incredible. Tree climbing, football, wood chip fights, riding bikes, making dens… The list is endless. It was all so real and pure.

The internet tech kicked in for us when playing in parks became that of the children younger than us. When our climbing frames and dens were invaded by the upcoming generations on the block. We was prepared, however. Already equipped with our parents old mobile phones. Having to go to the local shop once or twice a month to “top up credit” so you could send an SMS or take a call. We was introduced to a growing technology alongside the adults but we had something they didn’t – curiosity.

We delved into new technology like a fish thrown in water. Curious enough to experiment. Dazzled enough to learn. Young enough to master. The internet and all of its offerings were there for the taking and whilst our adults latched onto their old ways, we of the young generation saw endless potential and a new way of life.

The reason I reflect on my early years is because with the explosion of the internet and internet culture, the real world got lost along the way. The internet was a url link to a quick escape from reality. A game. A video. A chat with a friend. But as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and the internet is one of hell of a power.

Surfing the internet was a little activity you did once or twice a week in your spare time. Then it was on your laptop. Then your phone. And then suddenly the entire world opened up right in front of you. Suddenly you was a simple url link away from hearing Russians converse, or the French and Spanish or even just your local area. Sites like Facebook became the go-to place to find friends and family and even strangers. And like all social interactions, when you first walk in a room, you introduce yourself and disclose personal information one step at a time – we, knowing no better, flooded these sites with personal information.

Fast forward a few years and sites began to violate our privacy. Are we to blame, also? Perhaps. But what did we know at that time? Data is now the new unofficial currency. Algorithms feed us an echo chamber. People obsessing over viewership and followers. The entire technology has become a cesspool of propaganda slop and has weaponized people against each other. Gone are the days of innocent surfing and social interaction. Now are the days of a harsh reality inside an already harsh reality.

So here we are, the UK government has decided to ban social media for under 16s. Like with all government policies nowadays, it presents itself as for the people but under a different lens it is wrapped in questionable motives. With a ban for certain people comes verification for others, and verification to simply explore the internet is bordering close to a Big Brother state.

I want my kids to know that this ban comes at a time when I worry about young people online. Cancerous Discord groups (764) are on the rise, blackmailing young people into evil, satanic acts. CSAM is infecting almost all social platforms. Biased propaganda floods every public newsfeed. Algorithms will randomly insert a death/gore video from time to time. The internet has simply become the wild west. Even more wild than it was in the early days. So on that front, I am happy that young people now face challenges to access these platforms. A level of happy you can only truly appreciate until you have kids of your own.

However, as I said, verification is now going to be enforced. And the issue with most is not that our government can track us – they do a pretty good job at that already – but instead that our personal data will be stored in (most likely) third party servers. To put it simply, the UK will be one or two data breaches away from personal info/fraud Armageddon.

Data breaches are in full swing right now. Mine and my partners email are in constant attack by IP addresses all over the world. I, personally, have been blackmailed following a breach of a cloud storage account I held. Unfortunately, we live in a world now where all our data is stored online and if stolen, is used against us. All whilst corporations and governments simply shrug their shoulders and mass email an apology newsletter.

So, what do I conclude about the current state of the web? Tread carefully and expect the unexpected. The online world is the new world, and you don’t want to be caught with your pants down – literally. I expect, going forward, people will begin to segregate more online. Private group chats via Telegram or Signal. VPNs and TOR will be used more. I actually think we might be ok but, who knows, right?

The eskératz (entrance hall) — a Louis XV canapé (1920s copy). A Furch acoustic guitar and a Directoire-style demi-lune table, both furniture pieces from provincial workshops in southwest France, all acting together as a hinge. Two oil paintings — one of local hens, the other of the back garden — illustrate what actually matters and complete the décor.

The oil lamp, from the 1890's is both functional and necessary. Power outages are frequent.

This room is the main working space of a late 16th‑century town house, opening directly onto the street. As the most public-facing area of the building, it served as an important point of contact between the household and the wider community. With its long-standing association with the church, the room was historically accessible to local people and played a semi-public role within the life of the town. The presence of the canapé continues this tradition, helping to create an atmosphere in which visitors feel comfortable and welcome.

[test post using snap.as]

Watching someone on YouTube unbox a gadget like they’re defusing a bomb. Every layer examined. Every tab pulled – with ceremony. The device itself is the least interesting part.

Tax season 2026 arrived with a peculiar new ritual. Across kitchen tables and home offices, millions of filers uploaded W-2s, 1099s, and brokerage statements not to a human accountant, but to an algorithmic system promising speed, savings, and superior accuracy. The pitch was irresistible: why pay thousands for a professional when an AI agent can ingest your financial life, cross-reference the tax code, and spit out an optimised return in minutes?

One early adopter, Mike Todasco, documented the experiment on his Substack in vivid detail. He pointed OpenAI's Codex at a folder of tax documents, fed it a master prompt, and waited. Three hours and roughly twenty dollars later, the system had processed his return, a task that would have cost him around ten thousand dollars with his usual accountant. The post went viral. The implication was unmistakable: the AI tax revolution had arrived, and it was cheap.

But here is the question nobody racing to upload their documents seems to be asking. When the algorithm gets it wrong, and the evidence suggests it will, who exactly picks up the bill?

The Allure of the Algorithmic Accountant

The shift from tax software to tax agents is one of the defining themes of the 2026 filing season. Having AI “do” your taxes now means deploying large language models and agentic AI systems that pull data from financial institutions, read blurry 1099-K photographs using optical character recognition, categorise thousands of Venmo transactions, reconcile brokerage statements, and surface recent changes in tax law. Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, has gone all in on what it calls “done-for-you” experiences. Its AI engine, Intuit Assist, uses both traditional and generative AI to provide personalised recommendations, flag potential errors in real time, and even deploy a specialised agent, the “1099 Cost Agent,” that can ingest supplemental PDF forms and reason through stock sales to identify the correct cost basis.

Intuit announced in early 2026 that it had paired advanced agentic AI with a nationwide network of 13,000 human experts, creating what it describes as the only all-in-one consumer platform for year-round personal finance management. Credit Karma's Tax Assistant, another Intuit product, claims that members with simple tax situations who answer quick questions throughout the year can have up to 80 per cent of their Tax Year 2025 returns ready to go by filing time. TurboTax Live Assisted is marketed as “the only tax filing solution on the market that provides customers an expert final review at no added cost, ensuring 100 percent accuracy and maximum refund guaranteed.” That guarantee, notably, applies to the human-reviewed product, not to the AI outputs alone.

The competition is just as aggressive. H&R Block launched AI Tax Assist, a product designed to streamline preparation for individuals, the self-employed, and small-business owners. Newer entrants like Hive Tax AI can pull in years of past financial data, automatically organise transactions, and help identify missed deductions. TaxGPT markets itself as an AI tax assistant for individuals, promising to simplify the filing process through conversational interfaces. The message from every corner of the industry is the same: the machines are ready.

Yet the machines, it turns out, are not nearly as ready as the marketing suggests.

When the Maths Does Not Add Up

In early 2025, The New York Times conducted a test that should give every aspiring AI tax filer pause. Reporters ran eight fictional tax scenarios, developed in partnership with tax-filing service TaxSlayer, through four leading AI chatbots: Google's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and xAI's Grok. The chatbots were provided with all necessary forms. The result was sobering. On average, the tools miscalculated the refund or amount owed to the IRS by more than two thousand dollars.

The Times attributed the failures to a fundamental design limitation: AI chatbots do not truly understand the complex relationships among the pieces of information they process, and errors accumulate as tasks become more interconnected. Benedict Evans, a prominent technology analyst, told the newspaper that “the problem with taxes is all those very small little details matter, and it's not going to get every single little detail right.” He acknowledged that the models improve dramatically every six months, but added that they still only give “roughly the right answer,” which is not sufficient for taxes.

The nature of these failures matters as much as their frequency. Large language models are probabilistic systems. They generate outputs based on statistical patterns in their training data, not by executing deterministic calculations. This means that the same input can produce different outputs on different runs, a characteristic that is fundamentally incompatible with the precision required in tax preparation. As multiple experts have noted, the results are “unexplainable” in the formal sense: you cannot go back and audit the reasoning chain the way you can with traditional tax software, where every calculation is traceable to a specific rule in the code.

Independent benchmarking has confirmed the scale of the problem. TaxCalcBench, a rigorous evaluation framework created by Column Tax and published on arXiv in July 2025, tested frontier models on their ability to calculate personal income tax returns. The benchmark uses 51 test cases representing a range of personal tax situations, and a return is considered “correct” only if every evaluated field matches the expected value exactly, reflecting the IRS's own standard. The results were stark. Gemini 2.5 Pro, the best-performing standalone model, achieved just 32.4 per cent strict accuracy. Claude Opus 4 managed 27.5 per cent. GPT-5 reached 41.7 per cent. Common failure modes included consistent misuse of tax tables, errors in tax calculation, and incorrect eligibility determinations.

Even Filed, a company using a multi-agent architecture with validation layers, only achieved 72.5 per cent strict accuracy on complete federal returns, though it reached 94 per cent on a line-by-line basis. Patrick McKenzie, the well-known fintech commentator, has cited 2026 to 2028 as the AI industry's consensus window for when large language models might genuinely be able to “do taxes.” Column Tax itself concluded that the task is likely not automated by the end of 2026, and that achieving it will require strong tax domain expertise and proprietary datasets that go well beyond what general-purpose language models currently possess.

NerdWallet published its own analysis in March 2026, testing ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity on seven tax questions. The team combed through more than 50,000 words of chat transcripts and found that while the chatbots performed well on black-and-white questions, they produced inconsistent answers when the same question was asked multiple times and made assumptions about users that could lead to personalised errors. Sam Taube, NerdWallet's lead writer for investing and taxes, noted that “a couple of years ago, even the cutting-edge AI models couldn't reliably do basic arithmetic,” and that while recent updates have improved their maths skills, “the tendency to cite nonexistent, 'hallucinated' cases in response to legal questions still comes up in 2026.” His summary was blunt: “Taxes involve both of those subjects, math and law. It's not a reliable source of truth yet.”

There is an uncomfortable irony here. Intuit's own vice president of product management has publicly acknowledged that generative AI “doesn't do well with math yet,” which is why TurboTax does not use AI for its actual calculations. Making sure tax code outcomes are accurate, the executive said, is “always job number 1A,” adding: “We don't feel that generative AI is at a point yet where it can do that.” The company that sells the most popular tax software in the world is telling you, in effect, that AI cannot do the thing that millions of people are increasingly using AI to do.

The Accountability Void

If the accuracy picture is complicated, the liability picture is worse. When you sign your tax return, you attest under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate to the best of your knowledge. The IRS holds you accountable for your return's accuracy regardless of what tools or methods you used in preparation. There is no special category for AI-assisted errors. No safe harbour protects you from liability based on reliance on algorithmic outputs. If the AI is wrong, the IRS treats that error as your mistake.

This creates a structural asymmetry that ought to trouble anyone who has uploaded a PDF to a chatbot and clicked “file.” The companies building these tools bear minimal liability for the advice they generate. No contract exists between you and the AI in any meaningful sense. No professional liability insurance covers AI errors. No licensing board can sanction an algorithm for providing incorrect advice. The terms of service for virtually every consumer AI product disclaim responsibility for the accuracy of outputs, often in language buried deep in documents that almost nobody reads.

The contrast with traditional tax preparation is instructive. When you hire a human accountant or a CPA, that professional is bound by licensing requirements, ethical codes, and professional liability standards. If they make an error, there are established mechanisms for recourse: malpractice claims, professional disciplinary proceedings, and often errors-and-omissions insurance that can cover the financial damage. None of these mechanisms exist for AI tax tools. The technology occupies a regulatory gap between “software tool,” which carries product liability, and “professional service,” which carries professional liability. It is treated as neither, and thus escapes both frameworks.

Laura Carrubba, an accounting instructor at George Mason University, has warned bluntly that filers should “never, ever upload any kind of sensitive personal information into a public forum like that.” The privacy risks alone are substantial, but the liability exposure is arguably worse. As one tax professional put it to reporters: “The alibi can't be that ChatGPT told me to do it; that's kind of equivalent to the dog ate my homework.”

For tax professionals who use AI tools in their practice, the picture is somewhat different but no less fraught. Practitioners remain professionally liable for supervising AI-generated advice, ensuring its accuracy in the context of intricate tax laws and client-specific circumstances, and validating recommendations before presenting them to clients. AI developers may bear some responsibility for tool reliability, but current service agreements shift most liability to users. As one widely cited legal analysis put it, “the blame game is perhaps the same as it ever was; the responsibility for competent advice lies with the tax professionals who employ these and other tools.”

Canadian tax professionals have already reported a troubling pattern. A survey found that businesses are losing money after relying on AI tools for financial and tax advice, with tax professionals spotting mistakes on a regular basis. The problem, they warn, is not hypothetical. It is materialising now.

A Landmark Ruling and Its Ripple Effects

The legal landscape shifted significantly in February 2026, when Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York issued what appears to be the first ruling to squarely address privilege claims involving generative AI. In United States v. Heppner, the defendant, a corporate executive charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and making false statements to auditors in connection with an alleged scheme to defraud investors of approximately 150 million dollars, had used a consumer version of Anthropic's Claude to research legal issues related to the government's investigation.

Without his lawyers' direction, Heppner inputted information he had learned from his attorneys into the AI platform, generating roughly thirty-one documents that outlined defence strategy and potential arguments. Federal agents seized these documents during the search of his residence after his arrest in November 2025.

Judge Rakoff ruled that the AI-generated documents were not protected by either attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. His reasoning was direct. Claude “is not an attorney,” and the platform's privacy policy specified that it collects data on user inputs and outputs, uses that data to train the tool, and reserves the right to disclose such data to third parties, including governmental regulatory authorities. There was no confidentiality. There was no legal advice. There was no privilege.

The decision, described by the court as addressing “a question of first impression nationwide,” sent shockwaves through the legal and financial services communities. The New York State Bar Association published an analysis under the headline “Loose AI Prompts Sink Ships,” underscoring the severity of the implications. The Harvard Law Review noted that the conclusion was not as inevitable as Judge Rakoff's opinion might suggest, arguing that a more fact-intensive analysis would indicate that self-directed AI use should be privileged in at least some circumstances. But the practical implications are already reverberating through corporate tax departments, law firms, and compliance teams. The ruling raises pressing questions for any organisation incorporating AI into its workflows: if an employee feeds sensitive client data into a consumer AI tool to generate tax analysis, is that analysis discoverable? The answer, after Heppner, appears to be yes.

Judge Rakoff left open one important possibility. He suggested that the analysis might differ if AI use had been directed by counsel under a Kovel-type arrangement, where the AI could “arguably be said to have functioned in a manner akin to a highly trained professional who may act as a lawyer's agent within the protection of the attorney-client privilege.” This distinction between supervised and unsupervised AI use may prove to be one of the most consequential legal questions of the coming years.

The Regulatory Vacuum

The IRS itself has taken notice of AI's incursion into tax preparation, though its response so far has been more cautionary than prescriptive. For the first time in history, the agency addressed AI on its annual Dirty Dozen list of tax scams for 2026, warning about AI-enabled IRS impersonation via phone calls, AI-generated phishing content, and voice cloning. Nina Tross, liaison for tax advocacy at the National Society of Tax Professionals, told reporters that “AI is definitely the number one culprit” for perpetrating tax scams. Bad actors, she explained, use AI to gather information from taxpayers and corporations, then file “highly detailed” fraudulent tax forms that result in improper payments.

The IRS has also explicitly cautioned against relying on AI for tax guidance, reminding taxpayers that they “should not rely on AI-generated responses to complex tax questions” and should verify any calculations or information provided by artificial intelligence. But the agency has stopped well short of issuing comprehensive standards for AI use in tax preparation.

This regulatory gap is drawing increasing criticism. Bloomberg Law has reported on growing calls for federal leadership, noting that accounting software companies are promoting AI-powered tools to taxpayers while sidestepping responsibility for errors and passing liability to clients. A letter sent to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged comprehensive federal guidance on AI use in tax preparation, warning that without it, a patchwork of conflicting state rules would undermine business compliance and CPA professionalism. The comparison to the employee retention credit scheme, which earned its place on the IRS's own Dirty Dozen list, is apt: unregulated AI in tax preparation threatens to become the next entry.

Meanwhile, the IRS itself is quietly embracing the technology internally. The agency now operates 129 AI use cases, up from 54 in 2024, with AI powering audit selection, fraud detection, and taxpayer services. Yet the IRS has provided minimal public information about how its algorithms work, and taxpayers selected for audit are not told whether it was humans or AI that flagged their return. The asymmetry is striking: the government uses AI to scrutinise your return, but disclaims responsibility when you use AI to prepare it.

Across the Atlantic, the European Union's AI Act offers a more structured approach. The legislation, which entered into force on 1 August 2024, classifies AI systems by risk level and imposes corresponding obligations. Many AI use cases common in financial services, including credit scoring, fraud detection, and automated decision-making that affects access to services, are explicitly classified as high-risk, subject to strict requirements around risk management, human oversight, transparency, and auditability. For tax advisory firms specifically, the AI Act requires that operators ensure employees possess adequate AI literacy, that chatbots be clearly recognisable as AI systems, and that client data not be entered into open generative AI models without anonymisation. The European Banking Authority published a factsheet in November 2025 on the AI Act's implications for the banking and payments sector, and in November 2025 the European Parliament adopted a resolution laying out its priorities for AI use in financial services.

The full obligations for high-risk systems were initially set to take effect on 2 August 2026, though the European Commission proposed in November 2025 to extend that deadline to December 2027. FINRA in the United States expects compliance frameworks to be operational by the fourth quarter of 2026, with examinations beginning in early 2027.

A peer-reviewed study published in Nature's Humanities and Social Sciences Communications in 2025 examined how AI-driven systems impact legal fairness, due process, and the integrity of tax procedures. The researchers identified risks including algorithmic bias, opacity, and weakened procedural safeguards, and proposed an independent AI oversight mechanism to explain and review tax decisions. The study's central argument is that without such mechanisms, the use of AI in tax administration risks undermining the very principles of fairness and transparency that tax systems are built upon.

The Profession Fights Back, and Adapts

The accounting profession's response to the AI incursion has been a mixture of anxiety and strategic repositioning. A recent survey found that over half of financial services professionals, some 52 per cent, believe their job prospects have worsened in the past year due to AI, while 57 per cent avoid raising concerns with managers due to job insecurity. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs 2025 report listed accountants, auditors, and bookkeepers among “the world's fastest-declining jobs,” predicting 92 million global job displacements by 2030, with AI cited as a primary driver. Studies from OpenAI and the International Labour Organisation have also identified accountants and tax preparers as occupations “highly exposed to disruption.”

Yet the profession simultaneously faces a severe talent crisis. More than 300,000 accountants have left the profession since 2020, and three-quarters of CPAs are approaching retirement age. Recruitment agency Robert Half observed growing demand for accountants in 2025, with 58 per cent of employers planning to increase their permanent finance and accounting headcount, a six-percentage-point rise from 2024. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 5 per cent growth in accounting through 2034, with 124,200 annual openings. Surveys show that 46 per cent of firms intend to hire more full-time staff and 45 per cent plan to hire more seasonal staff, even as more than a third anticipate automating processes using AI.

The resolution to this apparent paradox lies in the profession's deliberate pivot from routine compliance work toward advisory services. Routine bookkeeping faces an estimated 85 per cent automation risk, but advisory roles face under 25 per cent. Tax professionals are shifting from two-hundred-dollar return preparation to planning engagements worth five to twenty-five thousand dollars, handling multi-entity structures, international tax planning, audit representation, and strategic advice that demands human judgement and client trust.

The American Institute of CPAs launched its Profession Ready Initiative on 2 February 2026, a research-backed effort to identify and develop the skills early-career CPAs need in an AI-driven marketplace. Susan Coffey, CEO of public accounting for the AICPA, described the initiative as addressing “one of the accounting profession's most pressing needs.” The research, led by SkillEdge, a firm specialising in professional practice analysis, will examine the roles early-career CPAs perform, how job expectations align against education curricula, and where professionals need additional development support. The organisation is developing a framework around the “T-shaped professional,” combining deep expertise with broad capabilities in analytics, digital fluency, and strategic thinking.

New roles are already emerging. Firms are hiring AI compliance officers to ensure ethical and audit-ready AI use, exceptions managers to handle discrepancies that AI cannot resolve, and AI audit reviewers to oversee investigations as auditing moves from sampling to full-visibility analysis. Notably, one of the Big Four accounting firms has already announced plans for an end-to-end AI audit process in 2026. CPA Practice Advisor published a pointed essay in February 2026 warning that if the profession lets software do all the thinking, firms risk becoming “interchangeable,” because if every CPA provides the same computer-generated answers, clients will simply pick the cheapest option.

The industry's emerging consensus is captured in a phrase that has become something of a mantra: “AI handles the 'what.' A great accountant tells you 'so what' and 'now what.'”

The Trust Deficit

Consumer sentiment tells a more complicated story than the breathless headlines about AI tax filing might suggest. A YouGov study released in January 2026 found that just 19 per cent of Americans trust AI in financial services, and only 10 per cent trust AI to make financial decisions automatically. Yet the 2026 IPX1031 Tax Procrastinators Report found that 46 per cent of Americans say they trust AI for tax advice, while 21 per cent said they would use AI to help them actually prepare their returns this year.

The gap between these figures hints at something important. People may tell pollsters they trust AI for tax advice, but far fewer are willing to hand over full decision-making authority. This is the uncanny valley of financial automation: close enough to useful to be tempting, far enough from reliable to be dangerous. The distinction between using AI as an assistant and using it as a replacement is one that the marketing rarely makes clear, but it is the distinction upon which financial safety depends.

Early IRS data for the 2026 filing season shows more than 36.5 million refunds totalling roughly 136.6 billion dollars issued as of early March, with the average refund running approximately 10.6 per cent higher than at the same point in 2025. Part of this increase may reflect the complexity of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping federal tax package passed in July 2025 that reshaped parts of the US tax code with new credits and deductions. This is precisely the kind of legislative complexity that trips up AI systems. This year's return is not simply last year's return with minor adjustments; it is a substantially different document, and the models trained on prior-year data may not have fully absorbed the changes.

Asking Harder Questions

The convenience narrative around AI tax filing is seductive, and not entirely wrong. For a straightforward W-2 return with no complications, an AI assistant may well produce an adequate result, particularly when integrated into established tax software that uses deterministic calculation engines for the actual maths. The problems begin at the margins, and in taxation, the margins are where the money is.

Consider the filer with cryptocurrency holdings across multiple exchanges, or the freelancer juggling 1099 income from several states, or the small business owner navigating the new provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. These are precisely the scenarios where AI chatbots have been shown to fail most spectacularly, and they are also the scenarios where the financial consequences of an error are most severe. An incorrectly claimed deduction does not just cost you the deduction itself; it can trigger an audit, generate penalties and interest, and in extreme cases, result in criminal liability for making false statements on a federal return.

The deeper issue is not whether AI will eventually get good enough at taxes. It almost certainly will. The issue is what happens in the interim, while millions of filers are being encouraged to trust systems that independent benchmarks show cannot correctly calculate even a third of federal returns. The consumer protection framework for this transition period is essentially nonexistent. There is no required disclosure when an AI system generates tax advice. There is no mandatory accuracy threshold. There is no insurance requirement. There is no regulatory body specifically overseeing AI tax preparation tools.

What would a responsible accountability framework look like? At minimum, it would require transparency about when AI is generating tax advice versus when a deterministic engine is performing calculations. It would mandate accuracy benchmarks, perhaps modelled on TaxCalcBench, that AI tax tools must meet before being marketed to consumers. It would require some form of liability insurance or indemnification, so that taxpayers who rely on AI advice in good faith are not left entirely on their own when the algorithm gets it wrong. And it would establish clear regulatory oversight, whether through the IRS, the Federal Trade Commission, or a new body entirely, to ensure that the gap between marketing claims and actual capability does not continue to widen.

This is the accountability gap that demands urgent attention. The technology is advancing faster than the legal and regulatory frameworks designed to govern it. Companies are marketing AI tax tools with confidence-inspiring language while their own engineers acknowledge the technology is not ready for the task. Taxpayers are absorbing all the risk while the companies building these tools absorb none of it.

The question is not whether we should celebrate the convenience. Convenience is fine. The question is whether we are willing to build the accountability structures that make that convenience safe, before the next filing season, and the one after that, and the one after that, turn millions of taxpayers into unwitting participants in the largest unregulated experiment in financial automation the world has ever seen.

The IRS will not accept “the AI did it” as an excuse. Perhaps it is time we stopped accepting it from the companies selling these tools, too.

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References and Sources

1. Todasco, M. “Yes, I Did My $10,000 Taxes With a $20 AI.” Substack, 2026.
2. The New York Times. AI chatbot tax accuracy test using eight fictional tax scenarios with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok, 2025.
3. Intuit Inc. “Intuit's AI-Driven Expert Platform Redefines Tax Filing with 'Done-For-You' Experiences.” Intuit Investor Relations, 2026.
4. Intuit Inc. “Intuit's All-in-One Agentic AI-Driven Consumer Platform Powers Year-Round Money Outcomes.” Intuit Investor Relations, 2026.
5. Column Tax. “TaxCalcBench: Evaluating Frontier Models on the Tax Calculation Task.” arXiv, July 2025.
6. Filed. “Measuring AI Tax Accuracy: Comparing Filed to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini on an Open Benchmark.” Filed.com, 2025.
7. NerdWallet. “Analysis: What AI Gets Right (and Very Wrong) About Taxes.” NerdWallet.com, 3 March 2026.
8. Morgan Lewis. “Using AI in Tax Workflows? What Heppner Means for Tax Departments.” MorganLewis.com, March 2026.
9. Harvard Law Review. “United States v. Heppner.” Harvard Law Review Blog, March 2026.
10. New York State Bar Association. “Loose AI Prompts Sink Ships: How Heppner Shook the Legal Community.” NYSBA.org, 2026.
11. Internal Revenue Service. “Dirty Dozen Tax Scams for 2026.” IRS.gov, March 2026.
12. Bloomberg Law. “IRS Standards on AI and Tax Preparation Would Protect Businesses.” Bloomberg Law, 2026.
13. Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. “Balancing Innovation and Integrity: AI in Tax Administration and Taxpayer Rights.” Nature.com, 2025.
14. European Commission. “AI Act: Shaping Europe's Digital Future.” Digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, 2024-2026.
15. Cross Border Advisory Solutions. “EU AI Regulation in Tax Law: New Obligations for Tax Advisory Firms.” CrossBorderAdvisorySolutions.com, 2026.
16. Accounting Today. “Accounting and Tax Staff Worry AI Threatens Jobs.” AccountingToday.com, 2025.
17. World Economic Forum. “Future of Jobs 2025 Report.” WEForum.org, 2025.
18. AICPA. “AICPA Launches Profession Ready Initiative to Transform CPA Workforce Readiness.” AICPA-CIMA.com, 2 February 2026.
19. CPA Practice Advisor. “The Decline of Human Intelligence in Tax Strategy: Is AI Replacing Smart Accountants?” CPAPracticeAdvisor.com, 16 February 2026.
20. YouGov. AI in Financial Services Trust Survey. January 2026.
21. IPX1031. “2026 Tax Procrastinators Report.” IPX1031.com, 2026.
22. Robert Half. Accounting and Finance Hiring Survey. 2025.
23. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Accountants and Auditors. BLS.gov.
24. Capitol Technology University. “Audited by an Algorithm: How the IRS Is Using AI in 2026.” Captechu.edu, 2026.
25. OpenAI and International Labour Organisation. AI Occupational Exposure Studies. 2024-2025.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Listen to the free weekly SmarterArticles Podcast

My first game comes from the WNBA, and has my Indiana Fever playing the Atlanta Dream. Start time for this game is scheduled for Noon CDT. Go Fever!

The second game for me to follow is a MLB game with my Texas Rangers playing the San Diego Padres. Opening pitch for this game is scheduled for 3:05 PM CDT. Go Rangers!

And the adventure continues.

I re-download the app to my phone. I open up Facebook. There's a default feed in front of me. I don't understand it.

There's a post from UNICEF Ireland. The white text on black background reads “This week, a 12-year-old girl in a tent in Gaza was shot...” and I'll spare you the rest of the quote.

I scroll down a post. There's a humorous post from some entity I am not familiar with. The Scottish Sun. It's a picture of a handsome young man surrounded by attractive young women. The caption in the picture reads “Boston braces for Tartan Army baby boom as smitten locals enjoy kilted flings”. An accompanying quote reads “It takes a real man to rock a kilt.” I giggle.

I scroll down. There are posts from entities that I do deliberately follow. Most of them are posts about posts from other entities. ...Which is literally what I'm doing right now. For what it's worth, I'm using my own words. I navigate over to some of their pages. A lot of it is screengrabs of posts with snarky commentary or “right on” commentary. There's little to no original content.

I click on “feeds”, I click on “friends”, and there's a feed in front of me of posts from friends, and the posts are in some order I don't understand. No context is given to me that helps me understand why I'm looking at what I am looking at, in the order that I'm looking at it. It isn't chronological. Some posts are higher up. Some are further down. Some are left out altogether.

Was some of it worth seeing or engaging with? Sure. Am I any more informed about what some of my friends are up to or thinking about? Also, sure. But why do I feel like such a sucker every time I log on there?

Deep down I know why. I ignore it.

In my subconscious somewhere, I recall the stat that only 8% of Facebook interactions are between friends these days. Sounds about right. I'd say about 8% of my time and interactions there are with friends myself. How did that happen? I got trained into disconnecting from my friends by a “social” network.

The bell rings. I salivate. I remind myself that everyone is susceptible to this stuff and it is not a good use of anyone's time. Facebook may not be the only offender these days, but you can quickly trace a direct line between everybody else's behavior and Facebook's.

I snap out of it after about fifteen minutes. Thankfully, before I can even get to “reels” this time.

I navigate over to the “memories” or “on this day” feed and see if there are any tasteless old posts that need deleting. I log out. I remove my login information from my device. I get back to living life.

Repeat tomorrow. Hopefully minus the fifteen soul sucking minutes.

-Ira

Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

In noted pair to this addition A flurry for our rise And first in flight The venerous heart in adulation For life and days To give us clear and Rome We sacrificed it all But there between Mercy for our skies And praying Seoul Will market for the day And this as many Better known to see The wild redemption- of seamless Earth Will fill our days to never Yet hanging land The Victory of our stripe As best recover The tidal disabandon With mercury deliver This height in mercy And playing with our wild To work without- refraction then The Earth will be a dollar But sudden wind In carrying orchard far The splice to reason for Carrying the wave- of molten thin and water And ever for The silent more A place for time and then Applianced up for scale And then the Sun In highest glory, Earth.

Ottawa

And the day folding South Office for us to remain In living standard at par Giant shadows of unwar Liberations to beguile And Citizen Rome Deep from afar A naming country in verse Of flat camber and steer The rightful news in 3D Going home and then forward The nights of entail And wherewithal Daytime for the Watch we keep Innocent and long The till of ten thousand Seamless to go And hiding our rank as we are Fortune delivered This day will unpass and reune The fitful Earth Hiding our game to renew Setting Dusk A misery an hour but Holy In the Oblast of Peter Thirty times to our Constitution- its Heart and ever Behest and made anew To the people who spoke And Sunways to edict Nine or ten men And cue this war on the reveal Earth had its way to bespoke Lines of fair fathom and grace Minotaur by the wrecklands- and a way to appeal Justice to the Bread and high tide The venerations to God are beknown Icicles three and snowbank Roses beneath and are fit for resurrection A sympathy to four-leggeds The entrance to Peter of Heaven Yesterday claw- The pine-edged repeat of new tidings Fading low and I tempered Style of repeal to the greatest Extravagant win as we are And to the sea back and mend Nightly grace for assumption Authority of Her Our Queen of great nobelisk Redemptions to fold without then Days set unfree But beguiled for and lift The auteur and the spent of renew Things of re-love The license of intention adore And sitting to roster Days of our time for all ways- And the Captain bringing us to verse Water to thirst and to field Our mission of this Tightly being renew Delivered to far and intend Mercy is making our home Jets to the shore Bettered in freedom to wrest And confiding all new Necessity bars to begin The Knighted of Rome And Earth early by its rest A Victory few And called to propose The distance to fusion in peace Right and thenso Make and redeem on our own Our own path and way Citizen on time to be here A solemn and labour- distance to amend This is the seat of the government And in terms to the West that we are Earth made amends to our suffering Lights of November in haste And therefore our will Citizens know our name- and our day- And it is Canada The House re-une of our deep- In this place as yours Timely professed The tame of the land at its best A gold star for all saints and renew And peace ever shall be.

New York

Mind over fences And to you, Rough Water Rials and risks And Infirm Island The Kennedy at pay Distance war unprepared and unkempt License for closure Citizens chill Clouds of esteem and Europa Empathy and N-Marks Quartered for the war Likeness of esteem Brave for the call In Romania, they win Times shining until- We descend upon one Woman The Victory of a star And Stonehenge of night The real velocity of time An Groot and more than that Hister forgot- and delivered in Maccabees We were shown what we had And were given a week For portions blame Intelligent and few This the unrandom And only at key We wondered but we were told- and then we weren’t The right hand has the answer And the left hand collects Supposing the Sun Had become of her sacred Tiled and at war Ebola knows when And all that Winter to sue Inviolable to you,- the Sun were to be Handing out masks And Tylenol And pain Grey clouds of fever To know when we can Am I a live virus With a window view Made a day able To round up and axis The mercy of it all,- we know a great fear To Justice mount,- and to see what we are seeking for Wednesdays are for scanning Until then an infirm And the most of an individual To pay rent and to hydrate Flee and return Insight to when Apostles of war and redemption This Peace our remembrance A holiday for the New Year The remark, and The Lord Opprobrium and file Making the great fallow That some places when- do end in Babel And others, the Night Trust Between every number And they in grade two,- the World was it all And taking a number And a witness And the way Between our dismemory That we filled on our way out A place like no other And a place- Nearly gone Every day for the wishes That were collected on time Three cars in my path And not a lightning of rule In seething to October While we jettisoned our less Bemeaning to fear Without either afflict And thanking hard Philosophy and cardstock The place to reveal We were here all along And intend to go back.

The Right Hand of Islamic Vladimir Putin

Shocks to the well Hanging men by restraint Files of eruption Four masses to the Iridian Sea And when I come across the desert Winking to Saladin And this curse of Abaddon We prosecute the very well And in might to mile We had heard of every war And chose to take part Of eternity And long-lasting everything Except nature and its hand The ghostless return of Earth May depart never in exceed And there were four horses And just as many to befriend But under Islamabad There were hearses and guests and the account To Armageddon running free Thoughts of the world to day and night To witness war forever While fighting for pie And in this distance A new navy of the vast Running through river waters And praying against the Android I found And the Urals never found- What other Islam might profess This day of the Christian martyr And the Second Coming of Christ To wean off the very church That satan would accuse For everfore the tiding And a sea of sanity the most Unto this world and its handmen To cross the waves of Jupiter And nine other horses of a thousand To the galaxy of a praying man In solace to Quispamsis And the very other of wilderness And many men running favour To the Justice mule that we adorn With agate and chrysanthemum To apostolic fits of Rome Speaking peace to every victim Wood and matter to every heart We pray for the Eastern lands Alfalfa for every bitter To the nights retaining the single Every process for the Lord Witnessing to the very river- of its keeping and meeting there Problems of the Southern state And a witness to the States in green Walking mile to carry our horse To the Canyon of heart and McGloin Pray therefore in mercy to know To witness what may be the err Syntax and trueness and very Qatar Who stopped the fires of Islam And unacquainted to the Sun Our neighbours might find in tide That Jupiter of the truss for foreign labour Our neighbours of right and mind Portmanteau to the rivers who meet That two Suns will rise in the North The swollen seas of ABBA became A weary for the righted whale And Jonas become- man of giving hand and adore In Christ we sound the war over And Islam lowered to the Gothenburg Sea Night and tide will find horses as they wept Decurrent to the low and alone Finding Christ on the very altar And Cuba won one at four To the navy, be blessed The very chances of laughter and joy Righting left and seeing Italy And this wonder is yours Rose to be blue of the land Decks of favour and April gain We sunk putin before the intro And then we had to beckon Time’s fever in November.

13 June 2026

Read Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook (1953) based on his Bauhaus lectures for the first time today before getting to work and felt reinvigorated by it. Evergreen. Over time I’m planning to sit with each of its subdivisions (below, as organized by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy) in depth…

I: Line as point progression Line as planar definition Line as mathematical proportion Line as coordinator for the path of motion

II: Line as optical guide Line as optical reason Line as psychological balance

III: Line as energy projection

IV: Line as symbol of centrifugal and centripedal movement Line as symbol of will and infinity Line as symbol of color mutations and kinetic harmony

…but for today I’m noting the first principles he lays out because they’re helping me think through the spatial inquiry that’s starting to happen in my studio (the Delimitation Stacks). With the caveat that I’m trying to submerge these things after learning them as I make—their relationship to intuition feels very important to preserve.

Anyway, to begin with, I think the categorization of active, medial, and passive lines (with respect to their cause, impact, and effect) relates to what I’ve arrived at recently in thinking about the goal of an optical essence of a space as a stack (vertical for now) of independent elements, which can then be individually (and endlessly, though not aimlessly) augmented to arrive at new structures. Which, when done well, seem to point towards inner relationships. Which Klee traces to nature—how we can think of line as it relates to the rhythms, patterns, and forms of human anatomy, plans, and earth, water, and air.

And so I think what’s crucial to implementing his teachings is to internalize them to the point where I can take an “active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal,” yet still honor certain instincts of the eye as they relate to emotional honesty. The toggling of delimiters through active, medial, and passive lines can be a playful, exploratory exercise. Even the simple notion of finding a space between an active and passive plane feels like it could be generative for an entire painting—an active/passive gradient—or a single choice to move something stagnant into a more dynamic range.