Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Australian Tax Lawyer Built an AI Tax Research Assistant That Will Never Get Sick of Your Questions

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Say hi to Ailira, everyone, aka “Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Resource Assistant.” She’s here to help with all your tax research needs. Well, in Australia, anyway:

Ailira, or “Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Resource Assistant” is so clever at tax that her creator believes she could help prompt the end of human tax agents. And within two months, she will answer questions in other areas of Australian law.

Ailira is the brainchild of Adelaide-based tax lawyer Adrian Cartland. The story goes that with no professional tax background, his girlfriend Sarah, a speech pathology student, scored 73 per cent on a first-year university tax exam with just 30 minutes’ training and Ailira at her side.

“Your tax agents will probably be gone within five years,” said a confident Mr Cartland.

Gauntlet. Thrown. Also, please gaze upon this photo of Adrian Cartland looking smug about his creation. I don’t blame him! It sounds pretty useful.

Ailira is especially interesting because, although she functions like a search engine, you can ask her questions like you ask your know-it-all colleague.

“The one thing we had difficulty with is that people are so used to doing keyword searches that they struggle to ask a question as you would to another human.

“So we did some upgrades of Ailira’s interface to encourage people to treat Ailira like a human, more in plain English.”

Right, except that “plain English” when asking questions about taxes isn’t really English.

But no matter, the key thing about artificial intelligence for tax research is that it’ll never get tired of answering your boring questions. Even your smartypants colleague will eventually want to go home.

[The Australian via TaxProf]

Image: iStock/pichet_w

Related Posts

Rich People in the U.S. Seem to Be Pulling Their Tax Weight Relative to Other Industrialized Countries

The United States relied more on tax revenue from wealthy individuals and families than other industrialized countries during the middle of the last decade, the Tax Foundation said Monday. Citing data released in 2008 from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the nonpartisan group said that the ratio of what higher-income households paid in taxes compared to their share of market income was bigger here than in certain other countries. The richest 10 percent of American households paid a 45 percent share of the nation’s taxes in the mid-2000s, the OECD found, while having a 33.5 percent share of market income. That 1.35 ratio was higher than countries including Australia (1.29), Canada (1.22), France (1.1) and Poland (0.84). [The Hill]

Deductible or Not Deductible: Bartender Refuses to Serve Drunk; Drunk Slashes Bartender’s Tires (Allegedly)

As you know, we like to check in on our friends across the pond every once in awhile to remind them about Valley Forge and whatnot and to see if they have managed to straighten up. There are problems aplenty for accountants in the UK and some of the strangest ones are shared with the peanut gallery over at AccountingWEB UK. Today’s problem is kind of fun because it may be one that many of you have been privy to.

I think I know the answer to this but will put it out there anyway.

Publican [Ed. note: that’s the landlord of a pub for the Yankees out there.] refused to serve a “customer” drink on Saturday night. The publican found his 4 tyres slashed after closing time.

Tax deduction?

To me, this seems like one of those situations that qualify as “the cost of doing business” (i.e. that’s life) and thus, not deductible. Think about it. You’re a bartender. You deal with assholes. Often times, these assholes get drunk. It’s your job as a bartender to take note when one of these assholes is drunk and refuse said asshole any further service. Since assholes don’t like being cut off (been there myself a time or two) this is usually taken personally and bad decisions end up getting made (e.g. attempt to walk to another bar, awkward sexual advances, vandalism).

Now, our publican friend would gladly trade any potential tax deduction for the chance to catch the guy who slashed the tires but that ship has sailed. My thinking is that he’s just going to have to let this one go. Other opinions? Fire away.