Research and development is so much more than developing a product and testing it for consumer safety. When you allow for a company to use your facility or property for R&D, or you are granted by a local government agency to conduct R&D, you get tax credits for it. That sounds lovely, at least or until you have to calculate it on your taxes. A new type of AI that is being tested and used for tax prep is now making those calculations a lot simpler.
Meet Fiona, the Virtual Tax Credit Calculator
Sure, AI isn’t exactly high tech enough to really impress people yet. Just look at how often AI on smartphones gets your voice commands and requests wrong. Yet, Fiona is quite different. “She” is pre-programmed with thousands of computations across multiple states and individual state laws.
That’s good news if you are trying to use R&D tax credit services or take credit in another state, or in your own state plus another state. Just tell Fiona what tax credits you want, the length of time or the tax period in question, and your location or the location of the research and development that happened or is happening. Fiona does the rest.
Fiona Is Already Working for Some Smaller Tax Companies
You might have already encountered Fiona when completing your personal taxes this year. The programming is being used by certain small tax and accounting companies in conjunction with R&D tax credit services. It’s highly likely that as this AI continues, Fiona will be integrated into many major online tax accounting programs and software.
