TaxGPT.ca

In March 2023, I released TaxGPT: a free and friendly AI tax chatbot for Canada.

TaxGPT draws upon existing government research which found that people often lack confidence to file on their own: perceiving the process as overly complex, with a high chance of facing financial or legal penalties if making a mistake. TaxGPT introduces Canadians to taxes in an approachable conversational format, using plain language and publicly-available information to return tax-related answers.

The site itself is built in Next.js, the API uses express.js, and the admin backend uses Django.

Here’s how TaxGPT works:

1. Someone asks a question
2. TaxGPT searches for relevant information in its knowledge base (a curated list of CRA public information)
3. TaxGPT reads that information and uses it to return an answer
4. TaxGPT also returns links to the CRA pages it thinks are most relevant

TaxGPT has answered over 30,000 questions from 2023 to present and made it into the National Post: “Ottawa developer designs chatbot to help Canadians file their taxes for free”.

Overall, TaxGPT has generated plenty of interest, and furthered Canada’s conversation about simpler tax filing, and continues to help Canadians every day!

The cute maple leaf is a Tyler Benning original.