Doing your taxes is hard enough, then the AI scams make it worse.

The NY Attorney General, Letitia James, issued a consumer alert last week (on April 1, but not an Aprils Fool) to remind tax payers of the AI driven scams that they may fall foul of.

These include
→ Deepfake videos of public officials
→ Highly personalised phishing emails
→ Cloned phone calls impersonating IRS agents or tax preparers
→ Manipulated AI search summaries with false contact details

Each of these is designed to trick vulnerable citizens at a stressful time (US taxes are complex), when they are most likely to fall for 'easy'.

AI enables scammers to scale and optimise persuasion techniques including:
→ Authority bias: trusting messages that appear to come from officials
→ Familiarity bias: believing voices or faces we think we recognise
→ Urgency bias: reacting quickly under perceived deadlines

AI can generate highly personalised scam content at scale. Which triggers confirmation bias, as it feels like it 'fits' what you expect during tax season.

Many people trust that AI-curated information is neutral, accurate or vetted, when it is as open to manipulation as any search tool.

The good news. Perplexity has issued "Computer for taxes" which helps with the hard parts of tax work that usually cost people the most time and money.

Whether that is drafting a federal income tax return on official IRS forms, reviewing a professionally prepared return, building dashboards or tools for more complex parts of the tax code, or something else, tax related.

Choose your tax partner wisely

SOURCE
NY Press Release: https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-offers-tips-protect-consumers-fraud-during-tax-season
Perplexity Computer for Taxes: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-computer-for-taxes