Unlike in countries like Israel, every American citizen is required by law to report and coordinate their annual taxes, which is considered one of the biggest headaches for them. The Israeli fintech company April, which develops the Tax-As-A-Service platform, enables them to do the cumbersome and sometimes expensive process more easily. Today (Wednesday) it is also announcing a fresh recruitment of funds that will be used for further development of their product.

The NLP-based accountant of the Americans

The system developed by April includes a "tax engine" that can understand the complexity of American tax law (among other things by using NLP) and "run" the tax logic on citizens' data to prepare the forms for them, calculate the expected refund and offer optimization tips. Unlike what you get from financial systems and tax season, the Israeli startup also emphasizes the user experience, which will allow even the "average citizen" to easily enter relevant financial data for tax purposes, and visually receive all information from the system. In addition, the company's system also includes integration capabilities (APIs / SDKs), so that various developers and financial organizations can implement the capabilities of the system and provide tax services to their users.

In a conversation with Geektime, Daniel Marcous, co-founder, and CTO of April, previously explained that the company's system was able to reduce the time it takes to process taxes, from more than 10 hours to several minutes. Marcous argues that while saving money depends on the user's financial situation, it can reach very significant amounts for the average citizen: "With a customized process, April is able to provide users with an excellent experience and give them an equal opportunity in managing his finances."

Marcous said the tax situation in the States is only getting worse, and getting more complicated over the years; the process has lengthened and has more clauses now than in the past 50 years. Along with a steady decline in the number of accountants relative to the American population, April is entering a very clear market. "We believe that with our deep understanding of tax law (using our natural language processing engine) much more can be done than taxes; we are really finding opportunities throughout the year to help our users save time and money," he added.

He also claimed that their product, which launched this past January, has helped thousands of users file taxes and get tax refunds quickly, with about 90 percent of them filing their taxes via smartphone in an average of less than 15 minutes.

The problem you are trying to solve is obvious, but what is the ultimate goal for you?

Marcous: "April is basically an accountant and a virtual personal financial advisor, and as time goes on, we add more services to the product to fulfill it in order to make it easier for the citizens. Therefore, it can be said that tax refunds are just the tip of the iceberg for April; we are building an envelope of services that will provide added value to the American citizen and therefore we are not afraid of a limited number of users. "

Founded by former Google and Deloitte employees

April was founded in 2021 by Daniel Marcous and Ben Borodach (CEO). The company currently employs about 30 people in its R&D center in Tel Aviv and in its U.S. offices. Today, the company announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round led by the American fintech fund Treasury with participation from Team8, Nyca Partners, QED Investors Euclidean Capital, iAngels and Atento Capital. This round leads to a total of $40 million raised by the company in six months, after completing its previous round this past January.

Ronen Assia, Managing Partner at Team8, said with the funding announcement that "The tax domain is becoming more complex from year to year, and technologies such as artificial intelligence, natural language analysis and access to financial information allow financial products to be built that include tax elements. April does just that, through collaborations with financial institutions. The company has succeeded in creating added value for companies and enables them to save time and money for their customers while having a holistic view of their financial situation. "