Taxfix

Taxfix operates a mobile and web application that lets private individuals prepare and submit income tax returns without prior tax knowledge. Instead of forms, the product uses an interview flow: an algorithm selects roughly 70 personalized questions from a pool of about 3,000, skipping topics that do not apply to the user, and users can scan their wage tax statement (Lohnsteuerbescheinigung) to pre-fill data. A calculator shows the estimated refund before submission, and completed returns are transmitted electronically to the responsible tax office through the official ELSTER interface of the German tax administration. Documents can be stored and categorized in the app.

The service is offered in tiers. "Start" is free and calculates a non-binding refund estimate; "Basic" is a self-service filing option priced from EUR 39.99 (EUR 59.99 for joint assessment); and "Expert" connects the user with an independent tax adviser who prepares the return, priced at 20% of the refund with a minimum of EUR 99.99, and extends the German filing deadline (from 31 July 2026 to 1 March 2027 for the relevant year). Supported cases include employees, families, students, pensioners, landlords without VAT obligations and small-business owners under the Kleinunternehmer rule; the company has more recently added a version for self-employed and VAT-registered users including VAT pre-registration. Cases such as civil-servant pensions, forestry and agricultural income, full-year residence abroad, dual residence and foreign income are listed as not supported.

Taxfix was founded in Berlin in 2016 by Mathis Büchi and Lino Teuteberg, who had previously built the document software company SmallPDF. The company employs tax experts, developers, lawyers and IT security specialists, and by 2022 had more than 500 employees working in Berlin and Madrid. Martin Ott is CEO. Country sites exist for Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy.

Founding story

Mathis Büchi and Lino Teuteberg, Swiss repeat entrepreneurs who had previously bootstrapped the document software company SmallPDF into profitability, founded Taxfix in Berlin in 2016. Living in Germany, they observed that the average taxpayer is entitled to roughly EUR 1,000 back at the end of the financial year, yet more than seven million eligible employees do not file a return, forfeiting billions of euros in unclaimed refunds each year. They framed the taxpayer's options as paying an accountant hundreds of euros, spending hours navigating hundreds of form fields and legal terminology, or skipping the filing entirely, and built an app-based alternative aimed at people who were deterred by the complexity or anxiety of the process.

Business model

Taxfix sells direct-to-consumer tax filing software on a paid basis, complemented by a marketplace-style service that routes users to independent tax advisers who prepare the return for them.

Downloading the app and calculating an estimated refund are free. Self-service filing is charged as a flat fee from EUR 39.99 (EUR 59.99 for joint assessment), described on the website as a subscription; the earlier fee was EUR 34.99 and was waived when the expected refund was below EUR 50. The Expert service, in which an independent tax adviser prepares the return, costs 20% of the tax refund with a minimum of EUR 99.99.

Traction

More than 10 million tax returns have been submitted through Taxfix, with cumulative refunds of over EUR 5 billion; the company had reached EUR 270 million in refunds by April 2020 and EUR 1 billion by October 2021. Revenue more than tripled in the twelve months to April 2020 and doubled year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022. Its iOS app holds a 4.8 rating from about 270,711 ratings in Germany; more than 40,000 five-star reviews across Apple and Google Play were reported in 2020. Headcount exceeded 500 in 2022 after more than 100 hires in the first quarter of that year.

Latest developments

Taxfix has extended its platform to self-employed users, covering both small-business (Kleinunternehmer) and VAT-liable cases including VAT pre-registration, with guided workflows and pre-submission checks. It promotes the Expert service as extending the filing deadline to 1 March 2027, and reports surpassing 10 million submitted returns and EUR 5 billion in refunds.