TLDR: The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) has successfully deployed a generative AI assistant in its call center production environment. This initiative aims to significantly improve efficiency, reduce taxpayer wait times, and enhance support for call center agents who handle approximately 800,000 inquiries annually, particularly during peak tax filing periods.
SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) has officially launched a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) assistant within its call center operations, marking a significant step in the state’s broader strategy to leverage AI for enhanced government services. The deployment, which went live on September 9, 2025, is designed to assist the 120 state workers who field roughly 800,000 taxpayer questions each year, generating over $90 billion in revenue for California through various taxes.
The new GenAI tool, developed by Sacramento-based SymSoft Solutions and utilizing Anthropic’s Claude large language model (LLM) within its Axyom Assist platform, functions as a sophisticated assistant for agents. It swiftly searches through more than 16,000 pages of CDTFA reference materials and thousands of web documents to provide accurate and timely responses to taxpayer inquiries. This capability is crucial for complex questions that traditionally require agents to sift through extensive documentation, often leading to extended call times and increased wait periods.
Thor Dunn, the call center’s chief, highlighted the operational challenges the AI aims to address. His center typically receives 42,000 calls monthly, with volumes spiking by over 50% during peak tax filing seasons. This surge often necessitates reassigning approximately 280 staff from other departments for three months of the year, disrupting their primary revenue-collecting duties. “Anything we can do to create more efficiencies is a good thing and that’s what we’re looking to do,” Dunn stated, emphasizing the AI assistant’s role in streamlining operations and potentially eliminating the need for such reassignments.
CDTFA Director Trista Gonzalez underscored the benefits, stating, “Integrating GenAI into our operations complements the efforts of our teams. Helping agents find the right answer is just one advantage of this new technology.” The department anticipates not only time savings but also improvements in call center training and enhanced morale among team members by providing them with better tools.
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This initiative is a direct outcome of Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order to harness GenAI’s power, with lessons learned from CDTFA’s real-world implementation expected to inform future deployments across other state government call centers. A pilot project over the past 10 months demonstrated the technology’s effectiveness in reducing average inquiry handling times. California continues to explore GenAI for operational efficiencies in various sectors, including housing, workforce planning, and bill analysis, with a second round of projects anticipated to conclude by summer 2025.
