Difficulty isn't the dividing line. A partner's basis adjustment across tiers, a §382 limitation after an ownership change, a multistate apportionment question — these are hard, and our AI Tax Assistant answers them from primary law with the authority attached. That's the job it was built for.
The dividing line is whether an answer exists yet. Some questions have no explicit guidance at all. What exists instead is a prevailing industry standard, usually a conservative counter-position, and a body of practitioner thinking that's still forming. Digital asset transactions, a fresh notice, a new state conformity question — you're not looking for the rule, because there isn't one yet. You're looking for where the profession has landed.
That's what Web search mode is for.
One toggle, per question
There's a Web search button in the composer. Off, your question goes to our curated tax knowledge base — the Code, regulations, IRS publications, state guidance. On, the assistant searches the live web instead and answers from what it finds. You choose per question, and it remembers your last setting.
Every web answer is labeled as one
The distinction between settled law and current thinking is one you can never afford to lose track of — so we made it impossible to. While the answer streams, you see the query the assistant sent to the web and how many sources it's reading. The finished answer carries a Web badge, permanently, in your chat history. Months later, you can still tell at a glance which answers rested on primary law and which reflected where the conversation was at the time.
Cited, so you can open and verify
Every claim carries a numbered citation linking to the page it came from. Open it, read it, judge it yourself.
That last part matters more in web mode than anywhere else in the product. Commentary is not authority. When there's no explicit guidance, the value isn't that an AI told you the answer — it's that you can see exactly who is saying what, weigh the sources, and form your own view of the defensible position. The citations aren't decoration; they're the whole point.
Documents stay with the knowledge base
One deliberate limit: web search and document upload don't mix. A question about a client's operating agreement should be answered from that document, not from the open internet — so attaching a file turns web search off and tells you why.
Try it
Web search comes with Essential (50 searches a month) and is unlimited on Pro, drawing on its own allowance rather than your regular assistant queries. Next time you hit a question the IRS hasn't settled — a new state conformity issue, a fresh notice, anything still being debated — flip the toggle and see how the profession is reading it.
Try it at partnertax.ai.
Shashank Sharma is the founder of Partnertax.ai, an AI tax assistant for tax professionals, built on cited IRS and Treasury sources.