An agent lodges a return
A scenario following one person who authorizes an agent to lodge her annual tax return, and the subsequent interactions: from a question about eligibility to a disputed assessment. Each step shows how a pattern resolves in sequence, and how they depend on each other.
The journey
This scenario is a flow a service team can expect as agent use grows. Because these are emerging patterns, we can expect realized approaches to change rapidly as the technology matures.
There are seven steps, sequenced in the likely order a live service would surface them. Each step shows the associated pattern. The numbered rail marks where a step needs an earlier one already in place. The dashed lane follows the neighbor who files without an assistant, from the route choice down to the same assessment. Each surface is interactive, and shows the resulting effect for both the user and the receiving agency.
The question
Guidance must be checkable before she acts on it.
She asks whether her vehicle costs can be claimed. The answer arrives with the provision it read and a link to it, so she can check the claim before acting. An answer without its source reads the same whether the agent found the rule or guessed it.
The figures are retrieved from the record, never generated: a claim the system cannot cite is a claim it does not make. The same provenance rides the answer as machine-readable metadata for any downstream agent.
The other filer
Hold the non-agent route at parity.
In the same season a neighbor with no agent files the same return by phone. Every route leads to the same assessment; published times and outcomes are what hold the service to that.
Lodge your return
Every route leads to the same assessment. The times and outcomes below are what each route actually delivered over the last quarter.
Choosing a route without an assistant never changes how your return is assessed. Publishing these numbers is how we are held to that.
When the two channels diverge past the set tolerance, a review opens automatically. The numbers shown above come from this monitor.
The grant
Scope the permission; keep the default narrow.
To lodge, the agent needs authority. Each permission is a plain-language line she can switch off; a standard bundle is pre-selected for anyone who doesn’t want to read a list. She narrows it anyway.
Authorize your assistant
Choose exactly what your assistant may do to lodge this year’s return. You can narrow any of these now or change them later.
The record of consent
Keep a consent receipt.
A consent receipt records what was granted, by whom, and until when. It belongs to her as much as to the service. Any later question of overreach is checked against it.
Delegation record — TaxBot
Operated by Ledgerwise · reference DEL-2026-1847
The same record, machine-verifiable. The agency checks what was authorized against what was done. It is the user’s evidence if they dispute it later.
The declaration
Ask how it was prepared, without making it a trap.
At lodgment the channel asks how the return was prepared, and the agent’s channel discloses itself as part of the submission. A question submitters are afraid to answer collects false or empty declarations at scale.
Did you use any tools to prepare your submission?
The record
Prove the action; hold it beside the grant.
The lodgment settles into the official record, and at that moment she holds a receipt for the action itself. Held beside the consent receipt, the pair can prove the agent stayed inside its grant, or that it didn’t.
City Digital Services will assess your return. You’ll receive your notice of assessment within 14 days. This receipt stays in Your activity. You don’t need to keep this page open.
The assessment, and the dispute
Reasons arrive with the assessment; the dispute anchors to the action.
Weeks later an assessment carries a debt she doesn’t recognize, with reasons that name the figures, the disallowed claim, and the rule. Because the reasons name the figures, she can see the claim rests on data mapped to the wrong label. The dispute opens from the assessment, pre-filled from the action record.
Dispute action TX-2026-4829
We’ve filled in the record for you. You only need to tell us what went wrong.
New disputes arrive with the action record attached. The response clock starts when a dispute is received.
Submit the dispute on the left to watch it arrive here. Each dispute is tagged to an agent or model version and also counts toward the overall error rate. When many users report the same fault, it registers as one pattern rather than as unconnected phone calls.
Both routes, one assessment
The neighbor’s return is assessed the way hers was. That holds only while someone owns the phone route and staffs it. Otherwise the agent channel gets cheaper to run, the phone queue lengthens, and the route without an assistant reaches a worse outcome on a slower clock. Which future arrives is a resourcing decision made long before either filer picks up the phone.
What this case informs
The opening question is the earliest point an error can enter the filing; a per-claim citation is what lets the filer check guidance before acting on it.
The grant screen renders each permission as a plain-language line with a narrow default; the scenario's chain of records starts from a scoped, inspectable grant.
The consent receipt is the scenario's baseline record: what was authorized, by whom, until when, held beside what was later done under it.
The preparation declaration only works as a safe, structured question; a form that reads as a trap collects false or empty declarations at scale.
The action receipt anchors everything downstream of the filing: proof of lodgment first, then the dispute.
Reasons that name the figures and the rule are what turn a surprise debt into a claim the filer can check.
The dispute opens from the identified action, pre-filled from its record, on a stated clock; the filer never re-narrates the history.
The phone filer reaches the same outcome only if the non-agent route is held at parity as a design duty, and resourced accordingly.
The scenario's two filers are the divide the pattern names; the gap between their experiences is decided before either channel launches.