Leave control+F in the dust. You can easily dive into the depths of the source materials without endless reading! Open a source and just ask…

• Summarize this document
• Does this source contain any information on [your area of interest]?
• Explain this document to me in three sentences

You can easily copy and paste the answer into your work product. If you close the window, the answer disappears and is not saved as part of your larger conversation. If you want to see the answer, you’ll have to open the source and ask again.

‍

Ask Blue J’s content recommendations are powered by an innovative algorithm that weaves together the connections and relationships between source documents so that you can instantly surface cases, legislation, admin and commentary related to your response generated in Ask Blue J.

You can make demands of how the response should look: If you ask the program to provide a brief summary, it’ll be more succinct than if you didn’t include that qualifier. Ask for in-depth, and it’ll provide additional details and context in its response. Feel free to start your prompt with phrases like “Explain in detail...” to see how you can optimize your output.

‍

Working with generative AI tools requires a different approach than working with traditional boolean search tools, and takes a bit of experimentation!

If you are seeing “unable to answer” responses, it is a good reminder that Ask Blue J was built to lower the number of hallucinations or false answers that you might find in tools like ChatGPT. Ask Blue J would rather give a non-response than provide misleading or false information, and sometimes it’s just a matter of re-phrasing your prompt.

If you repeatedly see “unable to answer” messages, try adjusting your prompt: 

• Avoid ambiguous language and basic keyword searches.
• Reorder the words in your prompt, or replace words with similar words
• Be sure to include § or Section when asking about specific section numbers
• Spell out acronyms
• Try to break down complex questions into single issues.
  • You can ask multiple follow-up questions, and Ask Blue J will remember the context of your conversation.

It is important to remember that Ask Blue J is relying predominantly on primary federal resources to source answers. If words or phrases used in your prompt have not been used in the source documents, Ask Blue J will be unable to locate an answer.

Additional Guidance

Ask Blue J is constantly improving! While Ask Blue J isn’t always able to respond confidently, expect to see many of these types of questions answered in the near future:

• Dates and historical rules, such as: “what was the vehicle deduction limit in 2017”
• Legislative history, or questions about how the law has changed over time
• Calculations, such as “calculate my tax deduction limit”

‍

Blue J relies on meticulously curated primary tax resources and Tax Notes’ news and commentary to provide you with the most reliable answers to your tax-related questions, and does not currently look at internet resources. While Ask Blue J isn't directly connected to the internet, we pride ourselves on providing you with the most accurate and reliable answers to your tax-related questions. Our database of primary and secondary tax sources is current and updated regularly.

Blue J relies on meticulously curated primary tax resources and licensed secondary sources to provide you with the most reliable answers to your tax-related questions. Blue J, a pioneer in legal technology, is proud to announce a strategic agreement with Tax Analysts, the publisher of Tax Notes, to license its industry-leading tax content for Ask Blue J. If you’d like to request more secondary sources, please email us at support@askbluej.com.

To email yourself a copy of the answer, hit copy to clipboard and email it to yourself.

To share a question and response with someone external to your firm, simply look for the three icons located below each response. You can:

• Copy to Clipboard: Copy and paste the question, response and sources into a document or email
• Print: to print or save as a PDF for easy reference

Recipients will be able to view the question and response and source names without needing to sign in to Ask Blue J. However, if they do want to experience Ask Blue J for themselves, they can email us directly at support@askbluej.com.

Ask Blue J reads all the source documents shown, not just the highlighted portion, to help craft a response to your question. Our algorithm scans the document to highlight the most relevant sections to the question you asked.

To download a source or document on Ask Blue J, simply click the printer icon in the upper right corner of the source. You can either print directly or save as a PDF from the print dialog box.

Yes! Using the intuitive chat interface, you can work with Ask Blue J as if talking with a tax research assistant. Start a conversation in Ask Blue J by asking your research question to get a high-quality, verifiable answer. Then, ask to go deeper into a specific topic with follow-up questions or Ask Blue J to rewrite the response as a draft email or memo for more efficient drafting. Once you have your response, you can easily copy it out of Ask Blue J into another document to get to a starting point faster than ever.

Go deeper into your research with follow-up questions.

Ask Blue J remembers the context of your conversation so that when you ask a follow-up question to your initial research question, it will remember your earlier prompts.

For example, suppose the response to your original question references Section 1060. In that case, you can ask the follow-up question “Explain 1060” to expand the scope of research, and you will get an answer that builds on your previous conversation.

‍Ask clarifying questions or for more detail.

If the initial response provided by Ask Blue J is a summary and you want to go deeper, simply Ask Blue J to explain in more detail.

For example, if you start with the question, “What are the rules for determining the allocation of consideration received in an applicable asset acquisition?” you can ask a follow-up question, “Provide more detail on the rules for allocation of consideration” to get a more detailed response to your initial question.

Rapidly rewrite an answer into a draft email or memo.

Ask Blue J’s conversational capabilities unlocks rapid drafting capabilities unlike any other research tool. Supercharge your efficiency with prompts to modify and tweak the output to precisely what you want.

For example, simply Ask Blue J to “Summarize the above as a client email,” and it will modify the response to your instructions.

When Ask Blue J responds with “I don't know," it means it is unable to accurately respond to your query at this time. There could be a few reasons why:

• Ask Blue J does not have authoritative source material to respond accurately
• Ask Blue J could not interpret the prompt to produce the correct context for an answer

While it may be frustrating to receive a response like this, it actually demonstrates the strength and reliability of our platform and how we are working to eliminate "hallucinations” - inaccurate or fabricated answers provided by the model.

If you think we have said “I don't know” in error, try these tips:

Write a clear, specific and focused question

The more specificity you provide in your question, the more likely you are to get a helpful response. Avoid ambiguous language and basic keyword searches.

Break questions into single issues and ask follow up questions

Ask Blue J is conversational. Try to break down complex questions into single issues. You can ask multiple follow-up questions, and Ask Blue J will remember the context of your conversation.

Additional Guidance

Ask Blue J is constantly improving! While Ask Blue J isn’t always able to respond confidently, expect to see many of these types of questions answered in the near future:

• Dates and historical rules, such as: “what was the vehicle deduction limit in 2017”
• Legislative history, or questions about how the law has changed over time
• Calculations, such as “calculate my tax deduction limit”

‍

‍

‍

Security and Trust are fundamental to the services we provide and Blue J is committed to ensuring that our product and processes employ enterprise-grade best practices to keep your data safe. Customer questions are stored in a secure, encrypted database, only accessible to select individuals who need access to maintain the database. We work with an independent auditor to maintain a SOC 2 Type 2 report, on an annual basis, which objectively certifies our controls to ensure the continuous security of our customers' data.  

Ask Blue J does not read, share or learn from any data/information input by our users without their explicit permission. Customer questions are stored in a secure, encrypted database, only accessible to select individuals who need access to maintain the database. We work with an independent auditor to maintain a SOC 2 Type 2 report, on an annual basis, which objectively certifies our controls to ensure the continuous security of our customers' data.  User submitted feedback on answers in Ask Blue J are reviewed by our legal research team alongside our data analysts in order to improve the quality of service.

‍

When you use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons to rate an answer, our team of legal experts and data scientists reviews that feedback to help us improve the accuracy and relevance of our answers.

Any questions or answers you submit through our platform are confidential and will not be reviewed by our team unless you have opted in explicitly to allow us to review for quality assurance. This means you can feel secure in asking any and all tax-related questions you may have, knowing that your information is safe and private.

We're committed to providing you with the best possible experience on our platform, and we welcome your feedback to help us achieve that goal. 

‍

Here are some examples of well-formed prompts you can use in Ask Blue J: 

• Explain Section 1060
• What are the rules for determining the allocation of consideration received in an applicable asset acquisition?
• Provide more detail on the rules for allocation of consideration
• Summarize the above as a client email

Feel free to replace your own specific issue or tax situation in the above examples. Book a time with our customer success team for a dedicated prompt-training session.

‍

Here are a few tips to get started: 

• Just ask your question, exactly as you would phrase it to a colleague
• Amend the response, as needed, for clarifications or more details
• Specify the format, whether that’s bullet points, a client memo or email

Book a time with our customer success team for a dedicated prompt-training session.

Every answer on Ask Blue J is supported by the most relevant sources so that you can be confident in your research. Ask Blue J shows relevant sources whose entire text helped inform the answer. For primary resources, Ask Blue J highlights the most relevant paragraph from each source, and includes a citation number and other relevant information like publish date or date of judgment. Regarding news and commentary in Ask Blue J, the full source is available to read in Tax Notes. The full text of the source was read in order to generate your answer but you must have a Tax Notes subscription to read it.

Our database of primary tax sources is current and updated daily.

Ask Blue J is currently trained on US federal tax law and has limited ability to answer questions on state and local tax (SALT) or broader legal questions outside of tax. Ask Blue J is predominantly trained on authoritative primary resources and Tax Notes’ news and commentary.

Within the US Federal settings, Ask Blue J answers questions about US Federal Tax, and does not contain state and local tax (SALT) information.

Under the Canada Income Tax settings, Ask Blue J answers questions about Canadian Income Tax, and does not contain the Excise Tax Act.

We are committed to bringing you the most current tax data available, and we'll provide updates as our content database expands further.

Ask Blue J is predominantly trained on authoritative primary resources and Tax Notes’ news and commentary to ensure the breadth and quality of the answers we provide. Ask Blue J’s content recommendations instantly surfaces cases, documents, legislation, and commentary related to your response. You’ll find answers supported by Tax Notes’ news analysis and stories, as well as Practice Articles, Special Reports, Viewpoints and much, much more from Tax Notes’ correspondent staff.

Within the US Federal settings, Ask Blue J is trained on:

• United States Supreme Court Cases
• Statutes
• Regulations
• Court Opinions
• Definitions
• IRS FAQs
• Income Tax Treaty
• Internal Revenue Bulletin
• IRS Announcement
• IRS Action on Decision
• IRS Chief Counsel Advice
• IRS Chief Counsel Advisory Memorandum
• IRS Chief Counsel Notices
• IRS E-Mail Chief Counsel Advice
• IRS Field Attorney Advice
• IRS Field Service Advisory Memorandum
• IRS Form Instructions
• IRS Industry Specialization Program Papers
• IRS Private Letter Ruling
• IRS Program Manager Technical Assistance
• IRS Proposed Regulation
• IRS Publication
• IRS Revenue Procedure
• IRS Revenue Ruling
• IRS Service Center Advice
• IRS Technical Advice Memorandum
• IRS Technical Expedited Advice Memorandums
• IRS Treasury Decision
• IRS Written Determination - Letter Ruling
• Quick Reference Tables
• Administrative Assistance
• Administrative Assistance Agreements
• Tax Notes Joint Committee on Taxation Explanations
• Tax Notes Letters to the Editor
• Model Tax Treaties
• Tax Notes News Analysis
• Tax Notes News Stories
• Tax Notes Practice Articles
• Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Testimony
• Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Transcripts
• Senate Foreign Relations Committee Reports
• Tax Notes Special Reports
• Tax Notes Tax Article Abstracts
• Treasury Department Technical Explanations
• Treaty Protocol
• Treaty Technical Explanation
• Tax Notes Treaty Summaries
• U.S. Ratification Instruments
• Tax Notes Viewpoint

Within the Canada Income Tax settings, Ask Blue J is trained on:

• Statutes
• Regulations
• Definitions
• Income Tax Folio
• CRA Roundtable
• Cases - Supreme Court of Canada
• CRA Publications (from website)
• CRA FAQs (from website)
• External Technical Interpretation
• Internal Technical Interpretation
• Department of Finance Explanatory Notes to Legislative Proposals
• Federal budget 2024
• Canadian Tax Treaty
• Canadian Tax Treaty Amending Protocol
• Ministerial Correspondence
• Ministerial Letter
• Administrative Letter
• General Information Letter
• Income Tax Severed Letter
• Technical Interpretation
• Finance Comfort Letters
• CRA Conference Statement
• Income Tax Audit Manual
• Administrative Assistance Agreements
• Tax Notes News Stories
• Tax Notes Practice Articles
• Tax Notes Special Reports
• Tax Notes Tax Article Abstracts
• Treaty Summaries
• Tax Notes Viewpoint

Within the US Federal Account settings, Ask Blue J answers questions about US Federal Tax, and does not contain state and local tax (SALT) information.

‍

Under the Canada Income Tax settings, Ask Blue J answers questions about Canadian Income Tax, and does not contain the Excise Tax Act.

Ask Blue J is built for tax and legal professionals. We work with the world’s leading professional services firms.

Ask Blue J leverages the latest large language models and our vast tax database to deliver industry leading quality answers to challenging tax questions in seconds using generative AI algorithms. Answers are backed by relevant source documents empowering tax and legal professionals to perform exceptional analysis faster than ever.