Patent Document ID: 8407113
Application ID: 12797574
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for operating a tax inference engine within a tax preparation application, comprising: receiving, by the tax inference engine executing on a processor, a plurality of tax data items comprising an itemized credit card statement; identifying, using details of line items in the itemized credit card statement, at least one purchase that correlates to a situation in a user's personal life, wherein the situation is associated with personal data relevant to tax preparation; inferring, of the at least one purchase, that the situation exists, and updating the personal data to reflect the situation in the user's personal life; assigning, by the tax inference engine, a plurality of confidence ratings to a plurality of tax data items and the personal data by applying the plurality of inference rules; assigning, by the tax inference engine, a plurality of relevance ratings to a plurality of tax questions by applying the plurality of inference rules; determining a subset of the plurality of tax questions, wherein each tax question of the subset comprises a relevance rating of the plurality of relevance ratings that exceeds a threshold amount, and wherein the subset is ordered by the plurality of relevance ratings; personalizing a tax question of the subset using at least the plurality of inference rules, the plurality of tax data items, the personal data, and the plurality of confidence ratings, wherein personalizing the tax question alters a wording of the tax question; and determining, by tax inference engine within the tax preparation application, tax advice using at least the plurality of inference rules, the plurality of tax data items, the personal data and the plurality of confidence ratings.