This Is State-Snooping Taken To The Extreme: UK Taxman Wants Your AI Chatbot History

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This Is State-Snooping Taken To The Extreme: UK Taxman Wants Your AI Chatbot History Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity,The UK government's tax collectors are pushing for…

The UK government's tax collectors are pushing for powers that would let HMRC demand the private chatbot conversations ordinary Britons have with AI tools when preparing their returns.

Under proposals in the Budget Bill, the definition of what the taxman can force you to hand over expands from computer "records" to any "relevant thing." That wording opens the door to prompt histories, working papers and full conversations on platforms such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Claude if they played any part in calculating figures.

The measure sits inside a broader drive to close a £59 billion tax gap. Failure to respond to a Schedule 36 information notice already carries an initial £300 penalty; those who do not correct inaccuracies can be hit for up to £3,000. Third parties, including the AI companies themselves, can even be ordered to supply the data, the Telegraph reports.

HMRC insists it is merely modernizing old powers for a digital world and that requests will still need a lawful basis. Critics see the thin end of a very long wedge.

Nimesh Shah of Blick Rothenberg noted that HMRC has said it wants information about "how tax figures have been produced using software or automated processes." That language, he observed, raises the question of whether the actual chatbot exchanges used to prepare calculations could become disclosable.

Seb Maley, chief executive of Qdos, put it more bluntly: "As more taxpayers and businesses put their trust in AI to help manage their tax affairs, HMRC is making sure it isn't left behind. It wants to know not just what tax figure a system produces, but how it arrived at that number."

Anne Strickland of the Taxpayers' Alliance called the idea "a deeply intrusive overreach by the taxman." She added that HMRC "already has sweeping powers, and expanding them further risks trampling over the privacy of ordinary Britons." Ministers, she said, must rein the authority in before the power is ever used.

David Stirling of Mint Wealth advised anyone who…

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