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Show notes
Tram Abramov is the founder of TaxScouts a company that helps people sort their taxes quickly, simply and cheaply. He’s also a husband, marathon runner, kite surfer and the owner of Rocket, an adorable Jack Russell mix (photo below).
The idea behind TaxScouts began when Tram found that doing his UK taxes online was much more involved and inconvenient than in his native Estonia. He was griping about this so much that as a self-styled technology “product geek“ it became clear to him and his friends that they should try to do something about the issue.
They realised that the cost of hiring a tax expert was often determined by the amount of time that expert had to spend on the administration of their business rather than on the complexity of the person’s tax affairs. As such they created a business which automates much of that administration, allowing the accountants to save time, charge less and pass on that saving to the consumer. This is TaxScouts.
They started the business without a lot of research, but thinking mostly about the needs of a customer and only really began running the numbers to check they had a viable business once they started trying to raise investment capital.
Tram emphasises that there’s a difference between a viable business and a profitable one. TaxScouts is viable but it’s also growing very fast, so they are reinvesting all the money they make in growing and that means it is not yet a profitable one.
Tram says the three biggest challenges of founding a business were:
The impact on his family. Being a start-up founder can be all-consuming and family ends up being neglected. He says this article about the life partners of start-up founders really struck a chord.
Being a first time founder means you often have no idea what you’re doing. You learn on the job and are a jack of all trades. So the big challenge is to learn what not to get involved in because you will mess it up if you do.
How to create a company culture that makes your team happy to be working with you? This is especially true in a pandemic. They found that encouraging people to drop the professional personas and be as authentic as possible at work has helped.
The most rewarding thing about running the business has been getting feedback about how the business has helped people. This is not only the feedback from the customers, but also the feedback from the network of accountancy partners who provide their advice to TaxScouts customers. These are mostly small firms of one to five people and the pandemic has been very hard on many of them. Tram tells the story of how TaxScouts has helped some of these businesses generate steady revenue, stabilise and ultimately grow. He also discusses how their model allows tax experts who are also parents to work flexibly, when they couldn’t in a traditional accountancy firm. This has helped mothers in particular to return to work sooner than they could otherwise do and prevents loss of earnings and de-skilling. This even contributes to reducing the pensions gap between men and women, a major cause of which is career breaks for motherhood.
Tram talks us through the customer experience, which has been consciously designed to involve as little time as possible typing in details and instead to focus on the customer building a long term working relationship with their personal tax expert.
Tram’s tips for making it easier to get your taxes right.
Find out for sure whether you need to complete a tax return. The key questions is, do you receive income in a way that the government may not know about (e.g. from streaming, a side hustle, trading cryptocurrencies, or letting out a room)? If so, you need to complete a tax return. You can check whether you need to submit a tax return on the gov.uk website.
Get your tax calculation done early. UK taxpayers don’t have to pay their taxes until January 31st, even if they file your tax returns in April. So getting the calculations done and the return prepared early means:
avoiding the pressure of scrambling to get all the paperwork in order at the last minute;
having plenty of time to consult with your tax expert about any areas of concern;
knowing well in advance how much you need to pay by January 31st, so if you haven’t saved enough, there is time to make up the money;
peace of mind in knowing what your tax bill will be and not having it hang over your head through the year and especially during the winter holiday period.
Squanderlust listeners get 10% off their first tax return through TaxScouts using our link.
Transcript
Martha Lawton
Welcome to Squanderlust, the podcast about the emotional side of money, why our actions aren't always as good as our intentions and what we can do about it. I'm your host, Martha Lawton. Today is a topical episode, as in the UK, it's the new tax year. And so we're talking taxes, specifically how our guest is here to help you get your taxes done with way less stress, and just a better experience all round. But we're also going to be talking about starting and growing a business and about using tech in a way that connects humans together and actually makes our lives easier, instead of just creating more atomization isolation and that sense that all we ever do is type things into a screen. So even though we're talking taxes, this episode is really all about people. So, for all that, I'm delighted to welcome my guest today, co founder and CEO of tech scouts. It's Tram Abramov. Tram, welcome to the show, tell our listeners a bit about yourself.
Tram Abramov
Hi, Martha, thanks for for having me. I appreciate all the kind words by the way, but about myself, super straightforward. I'm an Estonian living in London, married, have a dog. Have been living here for the probably most of my adult life now. Most of my waking hours, as you already mentioned, what I'm doing, I'm the CEO and co-founder of TaxScouts, a company that helps people sorting, sorting their taxes. If I'm not doing that, I do love running. I have a mission, a mission is a strong word, but I want to finish a marathon in every continent. I've managed three so far Africa, Europe and Northern America. And occasionally I kitesurf. Other than that, consider me to be your typical product geek in the tech world, meaning I'm fascinated by anything that you can solve with technology and kind of curious person by by nature. And that's pretty much it.
Martha Lawton
Fantastic. What kind of dog?
Tram Abramov
It's, it's Jack Russell, Jack Russell mix. Very, very small, lots of personality. She runs the household at the moment so. That is the way it is. If we had any idea what what happened when we decided to get the dog, we probably would have a second thoughts about it. But no, not regretting the decision in any any shape or form.
Martha Lawton
Amazing
Tram Abramov
We literally sent her away for this podcast for a day that she couldn't be barking in the background.
Martha Lawton
We're grateful. But if you can send us pictures for the show notes, we'd love that.
Tram Abramov
I certainly, will.
Martha Lawton
Wonderful. Okay, so it's great to meet you. And tell us a bit about TaxScouts. What do you guys do?
As you as you already mentioned, I think it's fair to say we're probably the most boring industry since since or after funeral directors, we help people with taxes. But what we do is really, really, really simple. What we are trying to do is letting anyone get their taxes sorted with as little stress and effort and cost as possible. So what this means what TaxScouts does, and anyone can sort their taxes online with us by a certified professional for a very low fixed fee, £119, in fact, regardless of their situation. So from that perspective, what we do is is really simple. We sort people's taxes. But I think the longer answer this question will take more than an hour. In our case, the magic really happens in the background. I think the real question is how we're able to do all of it about which I'm more than happy to talk about later, later in the podcast.
Martha Lawton
Sure. I mean, well, you've kind of given us a segue a bit about the how. So yeah, a little bit about the how go on.
Tram Abramov
Yeah. And I think maybe it's worth bringing up as to kind of how we how we got started with with TaxScouts to begin with. I mean, as I mentioned already, I'm an Estonian and I'm used to doing my taxes online with couple of clicks, meaning this is how I grew up with if you if you will, and I had to do maybe six years ago for the first time the taxes here in the UK for the first time. And I realised that while taxes are still done online here, which is great, but it was still a little bit too much effort and my tax situation was not super straightforward as well and I just had no idea where to turn to. Ended up looking for services that I can find online that does it for me but there weren't any. Is the... that was the challenge. I mean you, you had plenty of accountant services that helped you. But they were mostly your kind of typical traditional things. So I, as I had just quit my few months back my, my previous job as a product guy, I ended up having to point with my co-founder, Dan, who is our CTO and complain about this. That's literally how things got started is that I had to do taxes. And Dan is born and bred Londoner, so he is probably one of the few people I know who actually loves doing his taxes. And I mean, he sort of volunteering doing them for me. Anyway, we ended up getting into discussion that I felt that there must be a better way. I mean, as cliche as it sounds, but it ended up being true. And one thing led to another and we just started discussing, like, like, if we had an idea how to do this, would it be possible to get it done. And fast forward about a month, a third friend of mine joined the conversation, Kaupo, who joins as a third co-founder. And we just basically decided, you know what, let's give it a go. Why just keep talking about this over the course of four weeks, and to see if we can actually build something that sorts this problem, where people can do their taxes as quickly and easily as possible. So that's how we kind of got started. But the original question, sorry, I don't want to digress too much. What's the magic or how we're doing it is the funny thing is about 80% of our service is actually never seen by our customers, what our customers see, they see two things, they see our nice flashy website and a simple app where they kind of answer a couple of questions and get connected to an accountant. But 80% of our product customers will never see touch and hear about and what this product really is or what the service really is, in the background, we have this automation platform of accountants' work, and why is it kind of the secret sauce of TaxScouts, if you will, is this when we realise that the cost of getting a tax professional has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that people assume it has, which is that tax expertise and knowledge etc, nothing. It has everything to do with their day-to-day admin, the most boring stuff on the planet, like, I don't know, sending invoices, collecting, collecting data, structuring information, issuing payments, things that are not really that demanding intellectual, if you will, it's for sure, not why you're becoming a tax expert. And, but they take 80% of their time or more. And what we realise is most of those things have already had already been automated to some extent, or the other day with different online various platforms. And what we did just kind of pulled it all together. So as a result, what we really do is that on the surface of it to customers, it is simple tax platform, you're connected to an accountant to the taxes and are being sorted for a very low price. But in reality, we are just a massive automation engine for tax experts that by automating the work for those experts, we're able to pass on those savings to our customers. And that's it. And there is no rocket science behind there whatsoever. I mean, it's like it's not as if sending a rocket to Mars. But it's tediously boring and a lot of details need to go into actually to make it happen. I think and I think we're the kind of the first ones to approach this problem. Problem this way.
Martha Lawton
Okay, so what you're doing is running the business side of the accountancy business, a lot of it, so that the tax experts can focus on being tax experts. Am I getting that right? Or a lot? A lot? A lot of the... You're not running the strategic...
Tram Abramov
I wish, I wish I had said it the same way you just did Martha. But in a sense, yes. I mean, we're not running the just... we're not running kind of the entire business for... Exactly. But we're basically taking care of the kind of the day-to-day admin of any tax expert when they have to do with individuals and their taxes. So we basically take that off of their plate, so they can focus on the stuff that really, really matters. I mean, this is why people are finding the experts, right? Because they, they want help. They want the interaction, they want the assistance, they want the assurance that the stuff gets done, right. And that's what they're good at. Right? So why should they spending time in the 21st century on the stuff that we literally built the computers for? That's the kind of the thinking behind our behind our service. And by the way, thank you for asking that. I get really excited talking about this. And I know I can talk way too long about this.
Martha Lawton
No! Well, I mean, I'm a giant nerd as well. So like, I'm always interested in how things work, too. So this is, yeah, no, it's all good stuff. It's all good stuff. So, you know, how did you go about checking that you had a viable business before you started? Because obviously, you said it's a lot of work to put it all together. People haven't done it before. How did you know this was gonna fly?
Tram Abramov
Honest answer we didn't. I think initially when you when you start, I mean, let me put this. We built up the the seriousness of our business, or the business aspects of our business way after we had actually launched I think that's the that's the fair way of putting. I think what we more had is that, does this make sense from the perspective of someone who wants to get their taxes done? Right? Meaning, does this make sense for some, I mean... are we solving a real problem? And are we doing it well? So we looked at purely from the perspective of the customer. And as I mentioned, being like a product nerd is that this is what was interesting and challenging. And the business aspect of is, if I'm really honest, we only started looking more seriously into this, once we had launched the product and see, hey, you know what, people actually like it, there must be something in it. And we ended up being in a situation where we had done this mostly basically out of our own pocket for few months. And we realised, okay, we want to do this thing seriously, we need to raise some money from the from the investors. And they started asking all of those questions about the business that wait a second, I think I should have an answer to this is the kind of "what's your kind of viable path for profitability?" And like, "what is what are your scaling plans?" And "how does this model work in different countries?" And if I'm like, we kind of came up with this after we had actually done the launch of the service. So initially, it was mostly about does it work for our customers? Are we happy with what it does? The answer to this was yes. And in retrospect, we ended up being lucky in many ways, by focusing on the on the on the customer first, by seeing that the kind of the business side of things fall falls into place, as well. But again, coming back to original question, how do you know it's a viable business? I'd like actually, to... if there are any listeners who are trying to start their own thing, or starting their own thing is that I would actually separate what was the big gotcha, a-ha moment for me is that I would separate two things. One thing is that whether you have a profitable business, and another thing is that whether you have a viable business, and those two things are not necessarily the same. You can have a business that's completely viable, but is not profitable yet. But you can have a business that is not profitable, and will never be viable, does not... like, regardless of what you're doing. So a lot of startups, we are a startup we'rebacked by venture capitals, capitalists, is we're not a profitable business. And we have no intention of being the profitable business. But the way we look about the viability of our business is looking at if we did exactly the same thing we're doing right now, but we do did it, let's say, at 10x the scale meaning we did it 10 times more, would this mean that we would be more sustainable, less sustainable in terms of what their bank balance looks like? Meaning are we going to be burned through more cash or less cash? And the answer in our case, is that because inherently, our business model is sustainable. And it's only the question of at what volumes, we're doing things. We have a sustainable business. And once you get to the moment when you can show to yourself that what you do actually make sense in a spreadsheet. In terms of this, how much you're spending money per user, this is much how they're bringing back to you. It answers automatically a lot of questions that are normally will be raised, and a lot of friction goes away. But more importantly, it gives a lot of a lot of conviction, I guess in terms of that you're doing the right thing. And it took us a while to kind of to get to the understanding of of what we're doing. So in that sense, being an entrepreneur has been very much being like an MBA course. For for all the three founders in terms of different parts of the of the business, but short answer to the question, how do you how do we go about it's it's extremely crucial, but I think the only thing we're really focused on is that we focus on the sustainability of the business model. And that's what we care about in the end. We care less about whether we are profitable right now or not, mostly because our ambitions is to sort everyone's taxes in Europe, not just here in the here in the UK, and in Spain, as we are right now, and getting there is gonna take an awful lot of capital. So...
Martha Lawton
Yeah, yeah. So what have been some of the challenges you've come across with, with founding your own company?
That's a really great question. And it's, and it's probably the most difficult one to answer as well, if I'm really honest with you, mostly because like, you have a lot of challenges that are like a routine business as usual, that they're nothing, nothing really special. But I would say three challenges. And they're very, very different categories. The challenge number one, I would say actually is it was more of a personal channel channel challenge is that I don't think I appreciate the impact that is going to have on my family. From the from the get-go, meaning you end up being thinking about this 24/7 It's not something that you go home at six and you switch off, you wake up on like Saturday night, Sunday nights, the first thing you think about something about the about the business, and whether you admit it or not, your kind of your family by default, if you don't put conscious effort into this goes into the background, right? And, like, it took me honestly, it took me two years to realise that this is what I'm doing. I literally had to be told that this is this is not like this is not okay.
Tram Abramov
I mean, this is. And I think that was probably the biggest challenge challenge personally to literally to put myself into place to understand that I'm really passionate about doing TaxScouts, but I but I have family, and I need to make sure that I'm there for them. And I don't think I would have done this if I would have not been told both by my friends and by my family that I'm that I'm doing this. And I've seen there was good article on on the interwebs that I read recently, which was not about the CEOs of the company, but it was about their wives and husbands in terms of how it is to live with it with a co-founder, or a founder of the company. And I found this to be one of the most inspiring articles I've read in a while because it resonated with me so so so so, so strongly. So that certainly has been the challenge number one. The second thing I think is like when you... I'm a first time founder, so half of the time, I had no idea what I'm doing. But when you are building a career,
Martha Lawton
Relatable.
Tram Abramov
Yeah, thank you, but when you're building your career is that you normally like you're in a discipline, you're doing marketing, or you are a driver, or you are like you're doing something that's your trade, and you know what to doing and you're learning on the on the job. I think the second biggest challenge is when you're a founder, by default, especially doing this for the first time, half of the time, they have no clue what you're what you're doing really, is it you're learning on the job, and you need to be the kind of the jack of all trades. It doesn't work for some people. I'm happy-go-lucky type of guy anyway. So for me, it was kind of fine. I took it with stride. But that didn't make me any more competent in those areas that I was supposed to be handling. So in retrospect, I think the big challenge is the knowing when you shouldn't touch something when you have no right of touching it, right. And in a sense that, like there are some areas of the business that I shouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, right is the mostly because if I'm going to get involved in there, I'm just going to break everything. And knowing when you ask for help and not ask for help is extremely, extremely, extremely crucial for us, and for me and that was the kind of the challenge because initially you want to do everything yourself you want to be kind of elbow deep in everything. But why I think we have been lucky mostly because of my great co-founders who are much more what do you call as far as finances, for example, go they're much more savvy than I am, I'm not saying I'm ignorant but I think they know how to run the operations much better than I do and I think that was a massive challenges. I tried to do everything myself instead of getting help both from the co-founders and the and the people around you. And I think the third thing and this has more to do with... with the business itself is If you think, and maybe this is more relevant to the kind of the size of the business we are we're like, just over 40 people right now, and like, how it sounds fluffy but yes, all the business problems aside, but what in the end ends up mattering is the team that you're working with because this is why your company exists. And if they are not, they're fully then just not not gonna work and how do you create an environment that actually people want to come into and especially in the middle of this, this, this pandemic is the like creating an environment where people are happy to come into, into work or have zoom calls nowadays, I guess. That's it massive challenge in the in the middle of pandemic. And I think the way we ended up addressing it just kind of having a very general principle is that we know that people have personas meaning is that I'm Tram the husband, I'm Tram the CEO and I'm Tram the best friend, we kind of have an agreement that like you can be whoever you want, whatever your persona is, like don't need, don't feel the need to create a separate persona, Tram the CEO, at TaxScouts, it can be the same person who is Tram the husband or Tram the colleague and kind of minimising the gap between who you really are, who you are here with the team. And I think that has helped us a lot in terms of kind of getting through a) the pandemic and b) putting the kind of the situation being in a situation where people actually enjoy working here. So in other words, I think the three challenges mostly have been soft ones, if you think right, meaning the personal challenges, like how do what it does your family. The second thing is like, knowing where and when not to get involved. I made a lot of mistakes. And I think we're lucky still to be around. And three is that how you how you make sure that the team actually wants to come in every day and and do this with with joy. And they don't end up being in this place that you see. I don't know, when the you know, the series, The Office where it's like you think oh my god, this happens at my place. You don't want that.
Martha Lawton
No, no, that's a that's a great set of answers. We're gonna take a little break there. And when we come back, we'll talk about some of the more rewarding things. And we'll talk a bit about my experiences as a TaxScouts customer. And, and yeah, we'll get into some of that. Okay, so I asked you before the break, what were the challenges, and true to this story of it being actually about people, you said a lot of the challenges are about people. But what have been some of the most rewarding things about running TaxScouts?
Tram Abramov
That's a great question. By the way. I mean, let me just give it a second of thought. But I think I'm going to come back to people again, is because in the end, this is this is what it's about. But I mean, yeah, there are this kind of the the small things I can think of it like particular moments that I this is amazing. Like, one when we got our first customer review, for example is that's a real person who was actually using us and like telling us great things about their service. And like you keep rereading it what is what is being told? Well, I mean, it's feel silly, in retrospect, now that you have like, 1000s and 1000s of reviews. But I mean, I was probably most excited about that. Or, of course, it's the same thing I mentioned already, us deciding to fund the business by by institutional capital. And like, when someone actually writes you a cheque that has a lot of awful lot of zeros behind. It feels really scary. And you're sort of, "Oh, crap, like, this is serious. Now we really, we really have to do it!" So there are moments like this, or the the first person joining the company because like until then it's you, three friends doing a business and then all of a sudden, it's okay, now we need to start acting like, like we know what we're doing. So let's so there are a lot of moments like this. But I think over time, what has been the most rewarding thing is, is not necessarily that that like you're growing the business and things are going great, and you're operating in multiple countries and growing the team. But I think the feedback means that you're actually doing something good. I mean, we are a business. So I'm putting my hands and up here we have to be a sustainable and long term profitable thing. But if you are able to see that what you're doing actually impacts people's lives and impacts in a positive way. It really puts you in a position where you're happy waking up in the morning and doing this. And in a particular example, one of the most surprising things for us what we didn't expect is that I think when people think TaxScouts they think about people whose stress of taxes we're taken away and whose taxes we're doing. But there is kind of a, what I call the hidden side to us as well, which I think is even more fascinating is the like we have a network of accountants that we work with, who are helping our customers to get their taxes sorted now, most people don't know is the vast majority of accountancy firms in UK and across Europe as well. They're small firms. They're like one to five people, tops, and they're not not all here in London where I'm based, right? They are everywhere like Scotland, Midlands, etc. And they have had, especially with the pandemic, like, particularly challenging times, right? Meaning is the you're gonna, like people are coming into your office for help, but that just overnight disappears. And what particularly has made me feel really, really happy is that when you can see that you're not only helping your your customers, but you're genuinely helping your partners with that makes little difference in terms of how they're how they're running the business. I'm going to give you like, one example is that one of our very, very first partners we worked with, who, who, by the way, when he joined us, that was funny story itself, we should actually we're going to quickly talk about, we just had an idea, we didn't have a product out there. And I called the guy I found him on the internet, because he had great reviews and said, "Listen, we're launching this new product, we need someone who is going to be doing people's taxes, we don't have anything yet. We don't know much about taxes ourselves. But I willing to basically start working with us starting tomorrow." And you can see here the hesitation, like "Who are you? Why, what do you want from me? Is that you're basically promising me the moon and the stars of all the business we're going to bring you but how many customers you have now? Zero?" Anyway, he joined. And he took a massive gamble, joining TaxScouts, because like, we were like guys from nowhere. And and when we launched it went really, really, really well. He is now one of our most established partners with us, has hundreds I want to say thousands of customers, I think it's probably low thousands, hundreds. Anyway, he is super happy. And we had a pint with him maybe a year or two after he had joined with us and I was like, how is it going? Because what I wanted to get is like true feedback on how it is really working with us. This is just kind of the hype that I'm hyping to everyone that we are a fantastic partner to work with. But and the feedback that he gave me is Tram is like he, "you literally kind of have transformed my business in the sense that it generates us, like, a consistent stream of income that I don't have to worry about. We were able to hire more people to focus on those things." And, like, you listen to this and think is you know what I've been telling this to everyone. But I mean deep inside, I have been uncertain that whether this is actually the case, but when someone actually tells you that you know what you're having an impact on people's lives, and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. And another example isn't as think of it as the one of our partners, absolutely fantastic. person. And she's based in Scotland. And she is a stay home mum, or was is a stay home mom, but she used to work in the office before, before she had kids. But she wanted to continue doing her trade because she's really, really excellent at it. Kind of, and there wasn't really a way for her to do this. And we are literally the only, not the only, but one of the very few ways of someone being able to continue doing what they're what they're good at. So, so those things, in essence, when you feel like you're helping the small businesses that are not here in London, and also is that when you're helping people with being able to do the stuff that they can't really otherwise do. I know it sounds cheesy and stuff. But I mean, if if we wouldn't have that element of our business, I honestly think it would be really, really much harder for me to wake up every morning and kind of be excited about what we're doing. So it's not, it's not that getting people's taxes sorted is not unimportant. It is massively important and we're getting literally thousands of reviews from our customers about that. But the thing is that you're doing something more than just building a business, I guess, right? It's difficult to build that to say that we are kind of a mission driven or whatnot, you want to see that you have impact, you want to see that you're changing something for the better. And you want to think, especially as a founder, that if you do something, then if you're doing or if you wouldn't be doing it, the world would be worse off. And I think that's very egoistic way of looking at things, but I think that probably is the thing for us so yeah, I think the accounting side of things was a huge surprise for us in terms of over kind of the biggest reward for me is probably is I'd say is that. At least emotionally, if it makes sense?
Martha Lawton
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And like there's a few things in that that completely spark with me. One is, you know, I delivered training, financial education training for years and years and years. And you go in, you do a session, you leave, you never see whether people actually put it into practice. And there's some very shaky evidence about whether anybody ever does. So there have on occasion been times when I've been able to hear back from people who learned something in my session and genuinely put it into practice. And it has really made a difference for them. And that is always so, so powerful. So I really, I really feel you on the getting genuine feedback and seeing the difference it makes. And that is absolutely my jam as well. In fact, I got feedback from a listener as well saying, you know, she'd really transformed her relationship with money from listening to this show. And that was just amazing to me, she was much less anxious and more ready to engage in a practical way with her money from listening to this. And I was just so so delighted that was, you know, I'm all about the warm and fuzzies. And I don't care if it sounds cheesy, I'm just here for it. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. The other thing that I wanted to pick up what you were just saying about the second example of the accountant, you talked about who's a mother, because I think I don't even know if you realise the long term impact of that. Stay at home mothers not being able to work and the career breaks that women have, women end up taking as a result of not being able to work flexibly, are the biggest cause of women's pension gaps relative to men. So women's pensions, in general, amongst women who have pensions, even. So women are less likely to have pensions than men anyway, but women who have pensions, because of those career gaps, end up with about a third of the amount of pension savings,
Tram Abramov
Wow.
Martha Lawton
Because they miss out on the contributions and the subsequent investment growth while they're having kids. So any time you can help a mother stay in work, you're having literally a lifelong impact. It's amazing.
Tram Abramov
I mean, thank you for that. And I I'd be lying if I'd say that this was like by design when we started TaxScouts. But it was more is that I think it's more about what you learned by by running your business, is that kind of the impact that you can have. And once you realise that, then you actually start adjusting your behaviour a little bit in terms of "Okay, are there ways for us to do more of that? Right?" So I think this for us, it has been a lucky, lucky coincidence. And in that sense, I mean, I'm more than happy to talk about this on your podcast, etc. But what I just want to be very, very transparent about it was never the case of Tram, Dan and Kaupo sitting down and thinking, "okay, what are we going to be doing about this this problem in society?" while I do massively agree that this is exactly it's a big challenge, we just basically got there by by luck. And that said, once we realised that we are in such a position where we can help people, I mean, this has been like, extremely, extremely rewarding experience. But to a previous point is the getting getting feedback is I used to work in a corporate environment back in the day and remember, my boss of my boss of my boss of my boss, used to say that "Tram, feedback is a gift". And I always took this like, oh my god, this is like one of those typical corporate, pardon me, BS phrases that is just being said, but I think when you genuinely, like, when you are running a business and it doesn't matter whether you're a solo entrepreneur, you're running a bigger business as the... I think it quite often gets lost the fact that why are you doing those things, because a lot of the times people not doing things only for the salary and the paycheck that they're getting them, right? Meaning they want to have something rewarding out of it, and being able to genuinely to hear back something "you know what? What you do matters, right? It helps people," is sometimes gives you more than you then you can imagine. So what I would like to do here and use this opportunity to ask your listeners that if you're using any kind of service working with anyone, give feedback. If someone is great at something, tell them that they're great at something and it's gonna take 510 seconds out of your day but it will there is a chance it will make a significant difference to if not just this person's day, which it will, but maybe even life, so I would certainly ask people to take giving feedback seriously and not just think of this as a a corporate cliche of yeah feedback is a gift it genuinely is.
Martha Lawton
Are you plugging that everybody should rate and review us on iTunes because we would love that like, please! Everybody get in your podcast app. Give us those five stars!
Tram Abramov
I guess, I guess.
Martha Lawton
I mean, I you know, Tram Thank you. Yeah, so I wanted to talk a bit actually about. So we've talked a lot about the business, I want to talk a bit about the customer experience. And you have said that, you know, from the customer's perspective, it's very simple, there's a little form, you tick a few boxes. And like, I definitely didn't feel like I was particularly interacting with like a tech company as your customer. I was just like, oh, you were the platform that I put some numbers in, uploaded some documents. And you sorted me out with my lovely accountant who saved me a bunch of stress and money. Hi, Andy! Thank you! So can you just talk us a bit through that that customer experience like what do we what do we see?
Tram Abramov
Yeah, and I think it's has that has one of those things that has been a conscious choice, right? Meaning is it when we launched TaxScouts from the get go realise that you can do your taxes filling out forms to go to HMRC, if you want to, right? What people need are help, right, what they what they need assistance. And people don't want just another app were things are a little bit more simpler in terms of UI, or how things look on the screen, but they're still pretty much doing it themselves. They just want this thing sorted. So that for us was a conscious choice. So what we're trying to really do is the combine those two things, meaning that we do have an app like as described, when you sign up, you'll ask a couple of questions, why your taxes, but I mean, in the end, we try to keep it as simple as possible for everyone ask as little as possible from from anyone all kinds of detailed questions, keep the language in a way that people understand and do most of the stuff really in the background. I mean, in the end, the person don't care about this, how those things happen. They just want to make sure that they that they do happen. And in the background, why we kind of take care of the automation process for the accountants, pulling customers informations from the government and HMRC. And all that stuff is in the end, the other half of our of our product really, as I mentioned, these are the accoutants, right? So from the perspective of our customers, yes, the interaction is happening online or on a platform, we try to kind of not overload them with questions. But in the end, it's about the relationship that they end up building with a personal tax experts, who will, by the way, end up being with them for life. And it's finding the right balance between those, those two, right? I mean, we consider ourselves to be a technology platform. First and foremost, yes. But from the perspective of the customer, is the what we don't want to be like this cold. Here's an app, figure things out by yourself, kind of thing. So 100%. It this has been one of the few things that we have done by design from the from the get-go is that the experience, what you get in the in the in effect is that you need to think of us or I like to think of us is that like your personal tax advisor in your pocket, if you will, right meaning instead of, you can call them as well. But basically, you can do everything on your app. And rather than thinking of I'm interacting with the app, you think, mentally when you're doing those things on our website, is that you're thinking about I'm interacting with my with my advisor, right? I'm getting those things, and I think this is the kind of the most important. And we are simply a means to an end, right? The platform there is means to an end. And like half of the experience really is working on working without realising. And there is nothing more more to it. And I think it has worked really well for us so far, is like focusing on kind of blending together the interaction between the app and the accountant. And I think in retrospect, it probably has been a right choice for us, mostly because there are plenty of ones or the others. But there are very, very few who are kind of trying to have the best of both worlds, if you will, meaning is the we live in the 21st century, everything is happening on your mobile nowadays, there is no reason why it shouldn't but also to not lose the human element of it, which I think we quite often do. And that is the kind of the the crucial bit of the experience.
Martha Lawton
Great. So I mean, the process is super simple. Are there any ways that customers can make this even easier for themselves before they start working with their advisor? With the accountant?
Tram Abramov
I'm gonna say yes, but I don't want to come across as like a preachy person saying, like keep track of your finances, etc. But I think in the end, like part of the reason why we exist is that we like a big chunk of our customers are people who haven't been doing this for the first time. They have no idea what they're getting into, right. So if you don't know what you're doing, you don't know where you need help. I mean, come to TaxScouts, I mean, shameless plug. This is this is what we do. But in the end, what makes people's lives easier is just awareness of some basic things. And, for example, what is always good for you to know is that you will probably know that you will need to do your taxes, because the government tells you this quite often. But I think what is helpful whenever there is a, what is really helpful to understand it's a very simple principle of understanding when the odds are that you need to do your taxes. And the principle is very simple. If you earn money in a way that government probably doesn't know about it. Meaning, I don't know, you're having a side hustle where you earn a certain amount of money, or you I don't know, you bought and sold crypto or whatever, basically, income that you're in, it's outside of a business as usual stuff such as your your salary, odds are you want to check whether you need to do your tax return. Because if you don't, the challenge that you end up facing is that you end up being hit with a nasty surprise two, three, four years later. And that is one of the things that like, it's a really easy thing to check, and sometimes don't really have to do your taxes even. Even if, if you're below certain if you earn less from this side gig to have a certain amount, etc. But what I'm recommending do check, that's one. The second thing is the be be aware, especially people who are having side hustles is that, like, a lot of for example, I'm not sure how... what's your demographic here of our listeners. But over the last few years, streaming, video streaming has become like massively mainstream, YouTube Twitch, all that. Those people who were streaming were earning money for streaming, and they didn't realise that this has implications in terms of tax, and you ended up having like, literally hundreds of thousands of people earning money. And there is "oh, this doesn't happen by magic, right? Meaning is that that I need to take care of it." So that is why I'm saying this is that even you're starting out with something, it doesn't matter what it is, is the you're starting to kind of to safer pension with savings or doing a little bit of side investing, do check. And yeah, you can always get help. That is not the problem. But the thing number one want there is be aware, so that it won't sting you by by massive surprise.
Martha Lawton
We can put the link to the gov.uk. link in the show notes from here, where you can check whether or not you need to pay taxes on your incomes. So we'll put we'll put that in the show notes for people so they can do that check for themselves if this has prompted them made them think, "Hmm, perhaps I need to sort this out."
Tram Abramov
But most people don't yet know that's a relative like 80% of the adult population UK don't have to do their taxes. That is perfectly fine. But I think whenever you think maybe I need to do something, then odds are that something triggered you to think about this. The odds are have a look.
Martha Lawton
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm going to say one of the things that are my tip is do it early. Like one of the reasons we're talking about this at this time of year is if you do your taxes, if your tax year runs with the UK tax year, actually, this is the point where you have the numbers and you can work out your calculation from last year, because last year it's finished.
Tram Abramov
100%
Martha Lawton
So if you get your calculation done now, it actually there's so many benefits to that it's done. It's not hanging over your head, you're not in a rush to get all the papers together in January, you know, you've got plenty of time to run things by your accountant. If you have questions, you're not trying to hustle all that stuff done in like the last three days of January. Or if you're me back in the day, like at 10 o'clock at night on 31st of January going, "Oh my goodness, do I have enough money now to pay his bill?" because I didn't know the how much that was going to be. If you didn't save enough for whatever reason in the preceding year, you actually then have months to make that back up again. You know, no judgement we were just talking about first timers you know, first timers make all of those mistakes. And you know, getting started early is the way to not have those mistakes have horrible consequences at the end of the following January when we all have to file and submit and pay.
Tram Abramov
And actually I think what I'm gonna build on that I think it's not a tip but this is something that people don't quite often realise. People don't realise quite often they assume that filing your taxes and paying for them is the same thing. It's not. And that is the thing, what are all the people that okay, I need to do my taxes. And I think if I do my taxes, I also need to immediately pay. These are completely two separate processes, what you can do is that you can like, since when April starts that by the way the tax year runs from, as you mentioned, from April to April, when the new tax year starts at the sixth of April, every every year, this is the moment until from where you have until 31st of January to file and pay for taxes. And you can do the tax preparation process and tax calculations and tax filing anytime during the time. And that does not mean that you have to actually pay the moment you file. But the upside of doing this stuff early, as you, Martha, said is that you will end up knowing what your tax bill is right? And the thing is you do your taxes, I don't know, in the middle of the summer somewhere and you know exactly how much you need to kind of to save up. I've had so heard so many stories of let's say Uber drivers who are doing double shifts in January because they have no idea what their tax bill is going to be in January and they just want to make sure that they have enough cash. But that is really good tip. By the way, I should have thought it myself.
Martha Lawton
Well, here it is. And yeah, no, I'm just you know, I'm talking from experience. My husband thinks that I'm you know, a little bit weird, because I always do my taxes ASAP in April, but it just makes such a difference to my peace of mind to know exactly what I've got to pay when January comes around, and I'm ready to actually pay it. So yeah, for me, it's been it's been a huge shift. And in terms of just my kind of confidence and peace of mind. So we are I think going to wrap up pretty soon. But you guys have a deal for our listeners, don't you?
Tram Abramov
Yes,
Martha Lawton
You are giving our listeners a 10% off their first return, which takes that already low £119 pounds down to an even though a figure which I should have written onto my notes. But I've completely forgotten to do
Tram Abramov
Around £107
Martha Lawton
Around 107 Perfect. Thank you so much. Yes, and they all they have to do is go to TaxScouts.com/squanderlust to get that. So thank you very, very grateful for that offer.
Tram Abramov
The pleasure is all ours.
Martha Lawton
Yeah, and thank you for being such a lovely, lovely guest.
Tram Abramov
Ah no, thank you, thank you for having me. I mean, it was a it was a it was a true joy to be here. No I genuinely enjoyed. I really enjoyed the conversation. And I just want to say that again to your listeners, as well is, and this is not with the intent to plug TaxScouts, is that like if you have any kind of questions, issues regarding taxes, in general, and always feel free to reach out come to our website. I mean, we have a team there who is behind the online chat, for example, that is being able to hopefully answer your question. So do feel free to reach out if you're feeling that you know what, I'm not entirely sure what those things about, you can can get help without necessarily paying for it. Because a lot of cases, kind of the stuff that people need is really, really, really, really basic. And I think we can hopefully help with that as well. But I want to say thank you so much for having me on the show, Martha. It was read read real pleasure. And hopefully that was a to be useful.
Martha Lawton
Yeah, no, I definitely think you have Thank you very much. If you enjoyed Squanderlust Subscribe to us on Apple podcasts, or Google Podcasts and rate us to the more stars you give, the happier we get. And don't forget to tell your friends about us. Squanderlust is sponsored by Wardour Studios in Fitzrovia London, with production by David Smith, Charlie Brandon King, and Elisha Cunningham. Our theme music is by Wardour Studios a