South Africa’s TaxTim, has launched a company tax return tool to broaden their tax service to South African Small Businesses following the success of their tax return product for individuals.
TaxTim provides an online service to help with the completion and filing of tax returns and the latest addition sees TaxTim provide provisional and annual tax return services for SMEs that are registered Pty Ltd with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) and make less than R1m in turnover/revenue for the tax year.
According to Marc Sevitz, co-founder and CFO, “When we started this venture, our vision was to transform the tax return process for all taxpayers. The individual market was a natural starting point and I looked forward to the day that we would release services for businesses too. It’s exciting to see that come to fruition.”
TaxTim conducted a survey this year of small business owners in South Africa. The data revealed that 58% of owners took it upon themselves to manage the books of their company and only 13% of those handed the role over to an outsourced professional. This data validated the decision to provide an affordable service for small business owner-managers who don’t have extensive accounting and tax knowledge, allowing them to complete their company tax returns correctly and confidently. The cost of the SME annual tax return (ITR14) completion is R1199.
Like the individual tax return service, TaxTim’s conversational approach guides users through the company tax return step-by-step, without the need to understand technical accounting and tax terms. Questions are presented in a logical order in plain English and, where necessary, linked to pre-formulated calculators or tools.
Nicci Courtney-Clarke, Senior Tax Specialist and project lead, explained “Company tax is more detailed than individual income tax, but this provided us with an opportunity to expand the service and develop several new tools that add value. We were able to break down complicated tax specific transactions into simple terms and ultimately help SMEs turn accounting transactions into tax values – quickly, easily and correctly.”
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Future update plans include company tax returns for businesses earning more than R1m per annum, direct linking with SARS for one-click submission (as available for individual tax returns) and integration with leading cloud accounting packages such as SAGE, Xero and SMEasy.
Founded in 2011 with seed funding from Google by Evan Robinson, an inventor and self-professed tech geek, and Marc Sevitz, a Chartered Accountant and registered tax practitioner, TaxTim offers taxpayers the convenience of filing their tax returns online combined with the step-by-step guidance of Tim, a digital tax assistant, at a fraction of the cost of traditional specialists. TaxTim uses easy-to-understand language and a conversational format, replacing complicated tax jargon and block-based forms, to help taxpayers complete and file their tax returns with confidence – quickly, easily and correctly.
TaxTim is a gold member of AlphaCode, a Rand Merchant Investments (RMI) club for fintech startup entrepreneurs.
