TaxGPT.ca

In March 2023, I released TaxGPT: a free and friendly AI tax chatbot for Canada. I went from idea to a public launch in about five weeks.

TaxGPT draws upon existing Government of Canada research which found that people often lack confidence to file on their own. TaxGPT introduces Canadians to taxes in an approachable format, returning plain-language answers grounded in public CRA information.

TaxGPT is a full-stack RAG application. The frontend is built with 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. The most relevant source material is provided as context
4. TaxGPT generates a plain-language answer grounded in sources
5. TaxGPT also returns citations to the relevant CRA pages

I designed the RAG workflow, prompts, model selection, retrieval system, and application guardrails, as well as building the frontend, API, and administrative tooling.

TaxGPT has answered over 100,000 questions from over 49,500 users. It has also been featured in the National Post and Daily Hive:

• Ottawa developer designs chatbot to help Canadians file their taxes for free
• Handy AI tool answers your tax questions without long calls with CRA

TaxGPT is still free, still running, and still helping people every day. It’s also a good example of the kind of product I like building: identify a real user problem, get something useful out there quickly, and keep improving it based on how people actually use it.

The cute maple leaf is a Tyler Benning original.