The general director of the Tax Agency, Soledad Fernández, has opened the Income 2025 campaign with a clear message: do not use ChatGPT to make your declaration. “With how much the Tax Agency team has dedicated themselves to providing the best help and assistance tools, I wouldn’t risk doing it with ChatGPT,” he said.
The warning has a certain meaning. The language models They can hallucinate, they do not have access to your real tax data, and asking them to manage your return involves passing them personal and financial information that ends up stored on private servers. The risk of error (and sanction) is real. That said, there are more nuances.
Why is it important. The Treasury notice comes at a time when millions of Spaniards are looking for any shortcut to avoid one of the most tedious procedures of the year. If the official answer is “trust our tools”, the logical question is: are those tools really up to the task?
Between the lines. What the Treasury does not say is that the underlying problem is not ChatGPT: it is that the Spanish tax system is opaque enough that using an AI seems like a reasonable solution.
If millions of citizens are tempted to delegate their declaration to a chatbot, it is because something has failed before. The complexity of personal income tax (with its regional deductions, its cases of ascendants and descendants, its special regimes) is not an accident of design. It’s the design.
The current situation. Treasury has presented improvements in Web Rental for this campaign: more access to data capture windows, greater interaction between sections and better information on subsidies. It has also improved its app. And it maintains the traditional channels:
- The plan “We call you“starts on May 6 (appointment from April 29).
- In-person attention in offices, from June 1.
They are real advances, but gradual. Renta Web continues to be a platform that requires prior knowledge to navigate with ease. The Treasury virtual assistant resolves generic doubts, but not specific cases.
Yes, but. The alternative that remains for those who do not master taxation is to pay a manager. A service that has a cost that not everyone can afford, and that turns a right (understanding and managing your own declaration) into something that must be outsourced.
It’s the equivalent of IKEA selling its furniture without instructions and then complaining that people look up videos on YouTube to assemble it.
The big question. The Tax Agency also assures that it does not use AI in the processing of files or in extensive control, and that its risk analysis systems “cannot be considered AI in the strict sense.” Although it leaves the door open for its future use.
The question they do not answer is another: if AI is good enough for the Treasury to study it internally, why can’t it be part of a solution that helps the taxpayer from within the system, with their own data and with legal guarantees?
In Xataka | Draft Income Tax 2025: how to enter and present your 2026 declaration online with the Tax Agency website
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