Start-up Taxefy is making waves again

It's the kind of initial spark that one loves to hear from startups, particularly resourceful, growth-oriented startups. For Alexei Sinisin, observing friends and relatives also led to the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe business. “I noticed in my own life that many people were afraid of tax equity — or didn't even know how to do it,” he says. Wage tax equalization, officially known as employee valuation (ANV), is a good opportunity to recover overpaid taxes from the tax authorities. ANV can be calculated retrospectively for up to five years.

Aleksej Sinicyn is now working on a low-threshold digital solution to the tax equation. His goal: “There should be no technical, financial or linguistic barriers when it comes to employee evaluations.” This will lead to the startup Taxefy in 2022. It should take a maximum of “five to eight minutes” to enter the data needed for the ANV via the app. Taxefy, available in eight languages, guides you with questions that are worded in a very simple way. In the background, the app automatically “allocates the expenses reported by users to the correct key numbers,” explains Sinissen. The credit is later pre-calculated and the data is sent to finance. If the tax credit is transferred, Taxefy takes ten percent of it as commission. If the submitted request is unsuccessful, the User will not bear any costs.

Criticism from the Chamber and Finance

Shortly after Taxefy was launched, there was a lot of interest. But as user interest increases, so does criticism. In 2023 there will be a warning from the Chamber of Tax Consultants and Auditors (KSW). What is particularly criticized is the way the data is transferred to the financial department. This in turn conflicts with “very general questions” that “often inadvertently lead to unlawful information on the part of the applicant.” The app also promises higher tax refunds than the tax authorities might offer.

Taxefy has to cut the direct line to the tax office for several months and adapt the offer. With the “TAX APP TXFY Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbH”, a tax consulting company is included. “The tax consultant sends applications to the tax office,” says Alexei Sinitsyn.

The application is now fully available again, starting up in offensive mode. A “nearly six-figure number of users” have already submitted their employee reviews via Taxefy, and downloads have reportedly crossed the 300,000 mark. There is even talk of geographic expansion. Sinicyn: “We see potential for 500,000 to 600,000 app downloads and want to expand to a new country this year.”

Taxify promises a very simple approach

© Taxvi

At the same time, dark clouds are gathering again, and the dispute with KSW takes on a new dimension these days. In response to a request from the newspaper Klein Zeitung, the interest group said it had “filed a lawsuit against Taxefy GmbH in the Vienna Commercial Court.” In KSW's view, the “previous approach” taken by Taxefy “is not compatible with the relevant legal requirements (more precisely: with the professional regulations applicable to tax consultants and auditors)”.

Taxefy is reacting quietly for now. “The lawsuit refers to a previous version that has long been changed,” says Alexei Sinitsyn. All of this will have “absolutely no impact” on the processing of ANV and on Taxefy customers as a whole.