I Did My Taxes With AI — Should a CPA Check Before I File?
Start from the fact that decides everything: when you sign a tax return, you declare under penalty of perjury that it's accurate — and that responsibility stays with you regardless of who or what prepared it. A simple W-2 return prepared with reputable software is usually fine to file. The moment your year includes self-employment, multiple states, equity compensation, rental property, or a major life event, a pre-filing review by a CPA or enrolled agent is cheap insurance against penalties that land on you, not on the AI.
Where AI tax prep is genuinely solid
Fairness first: for straightforward situations — one employer, standard deduction, maybe some bank interest — modern tax software and AI assistants are accurate and have democratized filing. If that's your return, professional review would likely be overkill, and this article is not trying to scare you into buying it.
Where the edge cases live — and why AI misses them
- Self-employment and side income. Deduction eligibility (home office, vehicle, meals), estimated-payment obligations, retirement-plan options for the self-employed — this is judgment territory where the right answer depends on facts an AI conversation didn't surface.
- Multi-state years. Moved states? Worked remotely for an out-of-state employer? State residency and sourcing rules are intricate, differ by state pair, and are a classic source of both overpayment and surprise notices.
- Equity compensation. RSUs, ISOs, ESPP sales — cost-basis errors here are among the most common expensive mistakes in self-prepared returns, sometimes taxing the same income twice.
- Rentals, K-1s, crypto, foreign accounts. Each carries its own forms, elections, and traps (including reporting obligations with severe penalties that have nothing to do with tax owed).
- Hallucinated confidence. Ask an AI chatbot whether something is deductible and it answers fluently either way. Tax law changes yearly; models carry training-data lag, and thresholds, credits, and rules move. The model won't flag what it doesn't know has changed.
What a professional review looks like
You don't have to hand over the whole engagement. Many CPAs and enrolled agents (EAs — federally licensed practitioners who can represent you before the IRS) offer a review of a prepared return before filing: they check the numbers against your documents, the positions against current law, and — the part software can't do — ask about what's missing. Deductions you didn't claim, elections you didn't know existed, an estimated-payment plan that avoids next year's penalty. Reviews regularly pay for themselves; a found deduction or an avoided penalty often exceeds the fee.
The asymmetry that settles the question
If AI prepares your return perfectly, review costs you a modest fee and buys certainty. If AI gets it wrong, you pay the tax, the interest, and any accuracy-related penalties — and you handle the IRS notices. The software's terms of service do not stand next to you in that process. A licensed professional who reviewed and signed off can, and EAs and CPAs can represent you before the IRS if it comes to that. That asymmetry — bounded cost on one side, unbounded hassle on the other — is the whole argument, and it gets stronger every notch your return's complexity rises.