alt Hacker NewsA literal example is that I can use AI to file my taxes instead of spending a weekend and hundreds of dollars to have an accountant do it for me. It costs me like $5. that 245$ delta is the value of that output to me, as long as I am confident it is correct.
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Part of the value of paying an accountant is that you can get representation in case you are audited. Though I guess you did say you were confident it is correct.
Taxes are one of those things that seem difficult and people reach for tooling or expertise without trying initially without, but are pretty easy to do yourself just filling out the forms.
I think that to sum things up, we will have to wait until we can evaluate the cost of the mistakes. You could be lucky but you could also end up with a very negative output value in the longer time frame.
I did my taxes this year too with 5.5 and 3.1
Otherwise normally costs around $800 to do, because I have a small business too.
> as long as I am confident it is correct
Are you? Does it cost you extra (time or money) to be?
Seems to be a thing in the US to need specialised software, an accountant or AI to file taxes.
In most of Europe individuals at least don't need any of that. I'm in France and it's just a connection to a government run website to enter a few figures, takes less than an hour most of it is already pre-entered (salary etc), the main thing to add manually is charitable donations.
If you're running a business then yes an accountant can be good (or be required depending on the legal form of the business) but not for individuals.