April (April Tax Solutions Inc.), a tech powered tax platform that simplifies the filing process and integrates tax preparation into broader financial wellness, launched operations on January 18, 2022, in partnership with financial institutions such as Propel. The new platform has gained the support of notable tech investors and financial leaders, led by Team8 with participation from NYCA Partners, Bolt by QED, Treasury, Euclidean Capital, iAngels and tech unicorn founders of Acorns Jeff Cruttenden, Betterment Eli Broverman, Lemonade Shai Wininger, and Quovo (Plaid) Lowell Putnam, who contributed towards a $10M seed round.
April has created a new standard for tax solutions: helping Americans take control of their taxes by utilizing the latest in natural language processing and human-assisted AI. April’s personalized engine provides taxpayers with a fast, frictionless, and affordable tax experience aimed at easing the cumbersome tax process.
“Tax filing is stressful and complicated, especially for families with limited income. We’re excited to partner with April to offer these families a simple solution to access benefits such as the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which are a lifeline for financially vulnerable households,” said Jimmy Chen, Founder and CEO of Propel, a mission-driven financial technology company.
Unlike legacy providers, April partners directly with banks and financial institutions to do away with the silos traditionally existing between tax and financial planning, and is rolling out in the first half of 2022 to select customers of leading Fintech partners, in time to file their taxes for this season.
“The tax prep and filing process isn’t working for most Americans,” said Ben Borodach, Co-Founder of April. “Tax is a crucial asset or liability on the personal balance sheet of the American family that lacks visibility throughout the year. The reality for most Americans is that they will need to spend significant time and money just to understand their tax obligation. The time has come for a real-time, continuous, and integrated tax experience that helps the taxpayer make more informed financial decisions, while saving them time and money.”
Borodach, former Deloitte FinTech strategist who led corporate strategy for venture group Team8, co-founded April with Daniel Marcous, the former acting CTO of the navigation startup Waze (sold to Google for $1b in 2013) who later served as a lead data scientist at Google in Israel. Jody Padar, CPA, formerly of Botkeeper, will head its tax group.
“The tax experience in America is broken: most people don’t understand the tax code, or have any idea how to optimize their returns,” said Ronen Assia, Managing Partner at Team8 and co-founder of eToro. “April’s holistic, user-centric approach to taxes provides a fantastic opportunity for banks and FinTech companies to build equity with their members by simplifying tax prep and dramatically reducing tax-related stress.”
The tax code in the U.S., while fully accessible to the public, is deeply complex, and only a handful of tax companies have found a way to translate that code into digital applications. April describes itself as democratizing the tax engine through modern APIs that enable developers to tap into and develop new solutions, ultimately allowing for taxpayers to have greater transparency and autonomy in the process.
On average, approximately 75% of Americans receive more than $300 billion in tax refunds every year (according to most recent IRS statistics). This is money that could be put towards investments, education, or everyday expenses, rather than being needlessly held by the government and then returned in annual refunds.
“The need to avoid overpayments is evident in the fact that roughly 60% of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense,” said Borodach. (Source: 2021 Bankrate Survey). “Giving Americans early access to their refund is one way April plans to help taxpayers have greater control of their finances and deal with surprises throughout the year.”
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Tags: Benefits, Technology
