BY TOM JACKSON
South African fintech startup TaxTim has made Nigeria its second international market after partnering with PwC to offer virtual tax assistance to its clients.
Founded in 2011 with seed funding from Google by Evan Robinson and Marc Sevitz, TaxTim allows users to file their tax returns online with step-by-step guidance through a chat-based platform, with virtual assistant TaxTim asking questions to accurately complete the return.
The digital tax assistant first expanded to Namibia back in 2015, and raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the newly formed innovation unit of South African financial services group Momentum Metropolitan Holdings, Exponential, the next year.
It has now expanded to Nigeria through its partnership with PwC Nigeria, which is introducing a TaxTim-powered Digital Tax Assistant to allow its clients to correctly compute their taxes online and file their returns.
“This is a subscription-based, fully automated web application/chatbot. The logic is developed by tax professionals. Personal data is kept in a secure server with no third-party access. The application helps you prepare your personal tax computations and completes your tax returns.
By answering simple questions that do not require any tax knowledge, Tim will convert your answers into a fully completed tax return, which you can then submit to the relevant Internal Revenue Services. The entire process can be completed within 20 minutes,” PwC Nigeria said.
