On 16 July, my auditor sent me a draft Indian tax return: a refund of Rs 3 lakhs.

I gave ChatGPT my AIS, Form 26AS, bank statements, mutual fund statements, property papers, travel records, prior returns, and so on, told it not to look at the auditor’s draft, and asked it to calculate my tax independently.

It calculated a refund of about Rs 2.8 lakhs, roughly Rs 20K lower. (Less money, but a smaller refund felt less worse than a larger tax.)

Why? The auditor treated a Rs 40K in Form 26AS as interest on an income-tax refund. ChatGPT said (based on an earlier tax intimation) that it was tax deducted on an interest of Rs 1.3 lakhs.

My auditor disagreed, so we got on a screen-sharing call. She showed me Form 26AS. I showed her the earlier tax intimation. (It was confusing.)

“I think it was a mistake. I’ll rectify it,” she said.

I had a large capital gain from redeeming Indian mutual funds. My auditor said it’s taxable in India.

ChatGPT found a similar case, Anushka Sanjay Shah v. ITO. A Singapore tax resident had redeemed Indian mutual funds. The court said that the gain was taxable only in Singapore under the India-Singapore tax treaty.

My auditor said “No, only NRE accounts are exempt, not NRO accounts”. ChatGPT said “But the judgement does not mention the type of account at all”, which I told my auditor.

She checked with a senior colleague. The next morning she called. “You are eligible”, she said, “I will file it based on that scenario.” (I asked for that in writing.)

Yes, AI got me a better (or more correct) return. But frankly, it could have gone either way (been wrong, gotten me a worse return).

The main lesson I’m taking away is: The auditor cross-checked AI and filed it as their responsibility.

The useful Expert + AI workflow, for me, is:

  1. Let AI calculate independently without the expert.
  2. Give it raw sources, not summaries. (It can crunch lots more data.)
  3. Ask the expert precise questions with evidence.
  4. Get the expert’s position in writing for important things.
  5. Let the expert take the final call.

That division worked rather well, I think.