TaxScouts, a UK-based, Estonian-founded startup, has just closed a £5 million series A funding round; the company, until now operating in Britain, is launching its service in Spain and is planning to expand across Europe.
TaxScouts, an online tax preparation platform, was founded in 2018 by Estonians Mart Abramov and Kaupo Kõrv and Brit Daniel Karger. The founders were inspired by the Estonian way of declaring taxes online.
Using the TaxScouts platform, customers provide information for a certified accountant to quickly prepare their tax return. In the UK, this is submitted to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs via an integration – often in less than 24 hours, the company claims – for the flat fee of £119. TaxScouts says that “where possible, the service pulls information from online sources”.
The company said in a statement that having launched in the UK, it decided to expand to continental Europe. “Spain has been chosen as the first market in due to the size of the market and the complexity of the tax system. TaxScouts will expand to further markets soon after.”
“The market is double that of the UK, and this is the first step to us building a pan-European tax service. We will build the go-to solution for anyone across Europe to easily file their tax return regardless of its complexity,” Mart Abramov, a co-founder and CEO of TaxScouts, said in a statement.
To expand, the company raised £5 million. The round of investment was led by an Anglo-American venture capital firm, Octopus Ventures, joined by a US investor, Clocktower Technology Ventures, a Californian headquartered investor specialising in financial technology, with previous investors SpeedInvest, Seedcamp and Finch Capital, also returning for the round. The latest investment round brings TaxScouts’ total funding to date to £6.5 million.
Cover: TaxScouts’ team in London. Images by TaxScouts.
