File an Indian income tax return with ChatGPT as a cross-checker (it got some capital gains wrong)
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- by Hitesh Gupta (LinkedIn)
- Last checked
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- How we verify
Evidence: Described by posterThe person describes what happened in words, without screenshots or video.
PartialThe source says it only partly worked, or had a significant problem a person had to deal with.
What went wrong: Useful cross-checker, but gave wrong REIT guidance, misclassified gains and miscalculated some totals.
Outcome
A filer in India used ChatGPT, with documents in a Project, as his main assistant for his income tax return. He says it was good at flagging common pitfalls and asking for supporting documents, and most valuable for checking calculations across documents. But it gave confident wrong guidance on REIT dividends and sales, misclassified some short- and long-term capital gains even with broker reports, and sometimes got totals wrong; he had to verify every important number. He'd still use it next year.
Agent
Prompt Recreated prompt
The source didn't share its exact prompt, so we wrote this from what it describes.
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Help me cross-check my tax return figures against my documents, schedule by schedule. Fill in before running: - Tax documents and broker reports: [ATTACH] - Country and tax year: [DETAILS] - Schedules I'm filling: [LIST] Rules: - Ask for any missing document before calculating. - Show the source and the calculation for every total. - Mark less common items (e.g. REITs) as 'verify with official guidance'. - Don't classify gains without citing the rule and the holding period used. - If a site asks for a login, a CAPTCHA or payment details, stop and hand control back to me. - Ask for my OK before you pay, book, send, submit or cancel anything. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. Output: A per-schedule checklist of figures with sources and flags. You'll know it worked when: every total matches my documents and I've checked flagged items with the official rules.
Optional stronger version
Our rewrite with extra checks. The poster didn't test it.
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Help me cross-check my tax return figures against my documents, schedule by schedule. Fill in before running: - Tax documents and broker reports: [ATTACH] - Country and tax year: [DETAILS] - Schedules I'm filling: [LIST] Rules: - Ask for any missing document before calculating. - Show the source and the calculation for every total. - Mark less common items (e.g. REITs) as 'verify with official guidance'. - Don't classify gains without citing the rule and the holding period used. - If a site asks for a login, a CAPTCHA or payment details, stop and hand control back to me. - Ask for my OK before you pay, book, send, submit or cancel anything. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. - Validate the final return yourself on the official portal before submitting. Output: A per-schedule checklist of figures with sources and flags. You'll know it worked when: every total matches my documents and I've checked flagged items with the official rules. Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.
Source
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