Tax Inference Engine Personalizes Question Wording
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Solution Overview
Problem
Tax preparation software programs lack personalization and detailed advice, forcing taxpayers to rely on professional accountants for detailed information, which is expensive, or resort to generic questioning, failing to provide tailored guidance.
Innovation Solution
A tax inference engine that assigns confidence and relevance ratings to tax data items and questions, personalizes tax questions by altering their wording based on user-specific data, and provides personalized advice, allowing for efficient and personalized tax return preparation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If tax preparation software asks each user the exact same questions, then the software can be automated and cheaper to use, but the user receives no detailed personalized information or advice
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by customizing the questioning and advice provided to each taxpayer based on their specific situation. The inference engine analyzes individual tax data and tailors the interaction, ensuring that each user receives personalized information relevant to their circumstances rather than generic advice.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical system of rule-based question-asking with an inference engine that uses data analysis and pattern recognition. This substitution enables the system to automatically generate personalized advice by inferring relationships between tax data points, eliminating the need for manual accountant intervention while maintaining personalization.
2Loss of information
If taxpayers use professional accountants for detailed personalized information and advice, then they receive high-quality personalized service, but the cost becomes very expensive
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables taxpayers to effectively serve themselves by providing automated personalized advice through the inference engine. The engine analyzes the taxpayer's data and generates customized guidance without requiring professional accountant intervention, allowing users to obtain high-quality personalized service at a lower cost.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a digital copy of the accountant's analytical capabilities within the software system. The inference engine replicates the knowledge and reasoning processes of professional accountants, encoding tax expertise into algorithms that can automatically analyze data and provide personalized advice at minimal marginal cost.
3Ease of operation
If tax preparation software provides generic questioning to all users, then the system remains simple to operate, but it fails to provide tailored guidance
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies dynamics by making the questioning process adaptive rather than static. The inference engine dynamically adjusts the questions asked and the advice provided based on the taxpayer's responses and data profile. This allows the software to maintain ease of operation while becoming increasingly personalized as it learns more about the user's situation.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for operating a tax inference engine involves receiving tax data items, assigning confidence ratings to the tax data items using inference rules, and assigning relevance ratings to tax questions using the inference rules. The method further involves determining tax questions having ratings that exceed a threshold amount, and ordering the tax questions by the relevance ratings, personalizing a tax question using the inference rules, tax data items, and confidence ratings by altering a wording of the tax question, and determining tax advice using the inference rules, the tax data items, and the confidence ratings.