IRS’s AI CHAT IS UNRELIABLE
TIGTA Proves That the Tax Code is Too Complex For Technology To Fix
(ChatGPT Can’t Even Decipher this… But YOU are EXPECTED to)
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) recently released a revealing report on the efficacy of the IRS’s assisted chat program. See: “Opportunities Exist to Improve the Quality of Chat Applications,” TIGTA Report No. 2026-30-029, June 15, 2026.
At first glance, the report appears to focus on technical shortcomings in the agency’s customer service platform. Upon closer examination, the report illustrates a much larger problem, one I have discussed for decades and that forms the foundation of my paper Ten Principles of Federal Tax Policy. The problem is that the code is now so vast, so complex, and subject to change so often, that neither taxpayers nor the IRS can consistently understand or apply it.
See my Ten Principles paper here: Ten Principles Link
The IRS continues to search for technological solutions to a legislative problem. The IRS continues to expand digital services, believing that somehow better technology can overcome the staggering complexity of the code. TIGTA’s findings demonstrate exactly why that assumption is fundamentally flawed.
The IRS introduced live chat in 2017 and expanded the program with automated chatbots in 2021. By June 2025 the agency made the live chat program permanent, despite never establishing meaningful performance measures to determine whether it actually worked. TIGTA concluded that IRS management did not take “sufficient steps to evaluate the effectiveness” of the program before expanding it nationwide.
Even more troubling is that the IRS lacked reliable data to measure success. TIGTA found statistical reports riddled with errors. One report supposedly showed a single IRS employee simultaneously handling 603 live chat sessions. The IRS acknowledged the statistic was impossible because the software itself limits employees to just three concurrent chats. If the agency cannot trust the data used to evaluate its own program, any conclusions regarding efficiency become little more than guesswork.
The real concern, however, is not simply defective data. It is the accuracy of the substantive tax advice being delivered…
The rest of this article is found in the August Issue of Pilla talks Taxes.
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Articles found in the latest
PILLA TALKS TAXES ISSUES:
AUGUST
THE TAXPAYER DUE PROCESS ENHANCEMENT ACT
Congress’s Response to Commissioner v. Zuch
SANDERS’S PLAN TO CONFISCATE THE STOCK OF AI COMPANIES
No Need to Tax Them if You Simply Own Them
IRS’s AI CHAT IS UNRELIABLE
TIGTA Proves That the Tax Code is Too Complex For Technology To Fix
JULY
THE TRUMP LAWSUIT AGAINST THE IRS
What the “Settlement” Really Looks Like
THE RIGHT TO CHALLENGE UNDERLYING TAX ASSESSMENTS
Important Restrictions in CDP Appeal Cases
TREASURY WANTS BANKS TO BECOME QUASI-POLICE
New FinCEN Rules Call for “Information Exchange”
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