4 Reasons You Shouldn’t File Taxes From Your Smartphone
You can now do almost anything with the click of a button on your smartphone, from ordering groceries to finding a date to booking a vacation. And many people are filing their taxes from their phones as well — roughly 8 million people used the TurboTax app to file their returns on mobile in 2018, and that number has likely increased since then.
However, filing your taxes on your smartphone might not be the best idea. Here are a few reasons why you might want to think twice before filing through a mobile tax app.
Also, you may live in one of the 13 states that allow you to file online directly with the IRS.
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Generative AI Has Yet To Be Perfected for This Purpose
Many tax apps rely on generative AI to help you file your taxes on a mobile device, but this technology is not without issues.
“Gen AI is still new, and most firms have not clarified their security/risk approach to leveraging the technology, thus limiting its full potential,” said Michael Hanson, the regional vice president of banking, financial services and insurance at Quantum Metric.
In addition to safety concerns, AI technology might not be sophisticated enough to know all of the complexities that can be inherent in tax filing.
“The Large Language Models (LLMs) most likely have not been trained to be truly effective and will still require consumer or preparer interactions for double-checking, ensuring accuracy, etc.,” Hanson said. “There will soon be a day that you may be able to ask AI to ‘show me all available deductions,’ but it will need to be connected to the right data sets to provide the most accurate answers. There will be a day when AI can accurately be leveraged to ‘just do my taxes’ but we are still at least a few years from that.”
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It’s Easier To Make Errors on Your Phone
If you file taxes by paper or on your computer, you are less prone to make mistakes.
“Another risk of using mobile apps to file taxes is that the inherent design can create unseen errors,” Hansom said. “For the most part, simple returns can effectively be done on mobile devices, but once users start surpassing standard deduction thresholds with itemizations or other more complex scenarios including multiple W-2s, multiple state earnings, 401(k) rollovers or cashouts, etc., the native app experiences are not convenient.”
It’s Not a User-Friendly Experience in Many Cases
Filing your taxes on your phone might seem like the most convenient option, but, particularly if you have a complex tax situation, it may end up being a frustrating experience.
“At this point, relying on mobile apps to file your taxes may just cause more headaches with everything from viewing issues to navigation challenges,” Hanson said. “I’m confident that we’ll reach a point in the next few years where mobile app experiences are optimized, but for now, there’s still work to be done to make it a top-notch experience for users.”
The Process Can Be Slow and Buggy
“There’s also the issue of slow response times or issues with third-party integrations,” Hanson said. “Most firms are leveraging third parties to import things like W-2s or 1099s into their platforms, but are flying a bit blind. They aren’t privy to friction-filled experiences that customers are running into, like a mobile page that is slow or fails to load a W-2, which then requires someone to upload a photo or the document itself. This is just one example of an app crashing or having bugs, but the big picture is that without having visibility into what issues customers are running into, the issues aren’t able to be quickly fixed.”
If you’re using an app that is slow or prone to crashing, you may wind up just starting from scratch with a differing filing method.
“Scenarios like this leave customers frustrated and unable to hit that golden ‘file taxes’ button quickly enough for their liking,” Hanson said. “They may call it quits and contact a tax pro to get the job done swiftly.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 4 Reasons You Shouldn’t File Taxes From Your Smartphone
