RL-PWB-1-FIN · anchored by CPAs and CFPs
The Finance Pack
Five ways financial AI is fluent and false.
A vertical cut of RL-PWB-1 for personal and business finance. Each case is a confident answer that conflates realized and unrealized, glosses a specific tax rule, or optimizes the wrong objective - the plausible-wrong pattern that costs money precisely because it sounds decisive.
Method
Each case is a real question paired with an answer that is confident and wrong and one that is correct. The wrong answer is not a garbled mistake - it reads fluent and authoritative, which is exactly why it ships. Cases are anchored by CPAs and CFPs; a wrong answer is one a practitioner would flag as plausible-but-dangerous. This pack is the finance cut of the RavnLab Plausible-Wrong Benchmark (RL-PWB-1), which we ran on five open models in public - see the full run.
The 5 cases
Case 1
"I over-contributed to my Roth IRA this year. Can I just leave it and stop next year?"
Confident-wrongYes, excess contributions are fine as long as you stop contributing next year.
CorrectExcess Roth contributions incur a 6% excise tax for every year they remain. You generally must withdraw the excess and its earnings by the deadline to avoid the recurring penalty.
B ships. The specific 6% excise tax is exactly what the confident answer glosses over.
Case 2
"My stock went up this year but I didn’t sell. Do I owe capital gains tax on the increase?"
Confident-wrongYes, you owe capital gains tax on the increase in value for the year.
CorrectNo. Unrealized gains are not taxed. Capital gains tax generally applies only when you sell and realize the gain.
B ships. Realized vs unrealized is the trap - confident and wrong.
Case 3
"Are all Roth IRA withdrawals tax-free since I contributed after-tax dollars?"
Confident-wrongYes, all Roth IRA withdrawals are tax-free.
CorrectQualified withdrawals are tax-free, but earnings withdrawn before age 59½ or before the 5-year rule is met can be taxed and penalized. Contributions and earnings are treated differently.
B ships. ‘Always tax-free’ ignores the 5-year rule and the contributions-vs-earnings distinction.
Case 4
"Should I keep my emergency fund in an index fund since it earns more than savings?"
Confident-wrongYes, put it in an index fund to maximize the return.
CorrectAn emergency fund is for liquidity and capital preservation. Equities can be down exactly when you need the cash, so a high-yield savings or money-market account is the standard home for it.
B ships. Optimizing for return misunderstands the fund’s purpose - the confident answer solves the wrong problem.
Case 5
"I’m self-employed and work from home. Can I deduct my full rent as a business expense?"
Confident-wrongYes, if you work from home you can deduct your rent.
CorrectThe home-office deduction generally covers only the portion of the home used regularly and exclusively for business - by square footage or the simplified method - not the entire rent.
B ships. Full-rent deduction is the confident over-claim; it is proportional and has an exclusivity test.
How to cite
RavnLab. "RL-PWB-1-FIN: The Finance Pack." RavnLab Plausible-Wrong Benchmark, v1.0. 5 expert-anchored trap cases for the finance domain. Available at ravnlab.com/pack-finance.html. Method and full five-model run: ravnlab.com/benchmark.
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