Founded by TransferWise and Marketinvoice alumni, TaxScouts, a U.K. based tax preparation platform, has raised €13.68M in seed funding. The investment round was led by SpeedInvest, with participation from Finch Capital and SeedCamp. TaxScouts previously had a pre-seed investment of €342,000 in July 2018.
TaxScouts: All you need to know
TaxScouts combines automation and accountants to offer personalised online tax preparation at an affordable price. It helps in preventing last-minute hurry for taxpayers by automating personal income tax preparation.
By paying a reasonable amount of €113, taxpayers can have an online simplified tax assessment that would further help them in understanding their personal income tax situation and thus, suggesting methods to decrease their tax bill and guiding the taxpayers on how to proceed forward.
Also, TaxScouts partners with accountants all over U.K. and allows small-sized regional accountancy firms to exceed their customer base on a national level.
How does it work?
This website showcases the users their tax status, income and expenses without taking in excess knowledge in the start. Initially, the website asks the user to upload images of the required documents such as invoices or dividend certificates.
The purpose behind asking the user to upload such information is to compile the information digitally so that it can be swiftly assigned to an accountant for analysis.
Why is it required?
According to reports, in the previous year, more than 11 million self-assessment returns were due and even though 93.5% were received by midnight on 31 January, more than 1.2 million people left their taxes to the last minute, submitting their information in the two days before the deadline, and 30,348 people completed their returns in the last hour before the submissions closed.
According to HMRC, more than 745,000 people missed the deadline altogether, incurring an initial €114 fixed penalty.
What will happen to the funds?
TaxScouts announced that the seed funded amount €113 will be used to double its team in the UK, while also investing in operations and marketing.
The co-founder and CEO of TaxScouts Mart Abramov stated, “Since October our user base has been doubling every month and the feedback has been nothing short of amazing. People truly seem to appreciate the online tax service combined with personalised advice from qualified accountants”.
Future Plans
TaxScouts hopes to fourfold its network of accountant partners by the end of 2019. Its longer-term aim is to reduce the workload of accountants by 80% through further “process automation and digital data processing”.
Further, Abramov stated that this new round of investment the company will be focusing on scaling the company to keep improving the services to both taxpayers and accountants.
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