What AI tools did the CRA use in the 2025 tax season?

Some artificial intelligence tools were used at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) this tax season, as more than 95.6 per cent of returns were submitted online.

The main AI tool was an online chatbot powered by generative artificial intelligence, which was introduced in March of last year as part of the CRA's ongoing efforts to modernise and improve customer service.

Call volumes remained heavy during the filing period. Contact centres received more than 6.5 million calls, or about 120,000 a day, according to data released by the CRA. The agency says the chat tool helps Canadians quickly prompt general inquiries about the CRA's programs and services available on Canada.ca. 

The chatbot handled more than 445,000 chat sessions during the season. Users sought answers to more than 657,000 tax-related questions through the tool.

While the chatbot was not used to process individual tax files or to address tax situations, the CRA said it is using 19 AI systems that are active and in production. 

The agency listed general areas these tools are used within, including: taxpayer services, digital service enhancement and user navigation support, internal operations, document classification, internal generative AI tools for drafting and summarisation, coding assistants and developer productivity tools, forecasting and workload planning models, corporate functions, human resource analytics, operational performance analytics, and incident trend analysis.

"While the CRA is exploring the responsible use of AI to support internal efficiency and improve access to general information, all tax returns and individual tax files continue to be reviewed and processed with human oversight. AI is not used to make decisions on personal tax situations," said CRA spokesperson Nina Ioussoupova.

Just last month, a study from tax preparation firm H&R Block found that only nine per cent of Canadians have used AI to manage their finances in the past; while 56 per cent said they wouldn't be comfortable doing so.

South of the border, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said that as of summer 2025, it had 126 active AI applications for particular business or operational needs. Of the 100-plus applications, they fell into three categories: taxpayer services, such as chatbots; operational efficiency, including automated meeting summaries; and tax compliance and fraud detection, to help with audit selection. 

59 fell under operational efficiency, 24 were linked to taxpayer services, and 43 concerned tax compliance and fraud detection.

While the IRS faces staffing shortages, in March 2026, it said the future AI rollout was impeded by funding cuts, claiming its Research, Applied Analytics and Statistics group had lost 63 employees working on AI advancement in 2025.

Back at home, the CRA said that, from a tax compliance perspective, it is not yet integrating AI but rather other human-supervised screening technologies.

"The CRA currently uses rules-based risk assessment systems that, while not AI, do provide a systematic way to select potential cases for review and audit," added Ioussoupova.