This Ingenious $89 Service Pairs You with a CPA for Tax Season Your Visor advisor will do your taxes and optimize your returns for you.
By BIZ Experiences Store Edited by Jason Fell
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It's the most frustrating time of the year — tax season, that is. Along with paying around $10,500 in annual federal, state, and local income taxes, the average American will cough up anywhere from $176 to $457 to have their tax return professionally prepared. Talk about adding insult to injury.
You could always attempt to do your taxes yourself using tax prep software, but it's hardly as easy as many people believe it to be. Fortunately, you've always got another backup plan in the form of a startup called Visor.
Having just raised $16 million in financing, Visor is set to flip the tax-filing game on its head (and then some) with their incredible service. Once you sign up, their technology pairs you with a dedicated tax professional (CPA or EA) that, after you upload your documents and answer a few questions, will file your taxes for you, using machine learning to identify specific deductions you (probably) couldn't find on your own.
Visor co-founder and chief executive Gernot Zacke summarized this two-fold approach in a recent interview with TechCrunch, saying, "We're delivering the CPA experience through the convenience of a web app and a mobile app."
Once you sign up for Visor, you'll be asked to answer several questions about the current state of your finances and upload relevant documents, either in the form of a photograph or scan. After you send in your paperwork, you're all set; your advisor will take things from there. (This includes full-service protection if you happen to be chosen for auditing by the IRS. )
Beyond merely helping you file your taxes, Visor aims to humanize the whole process. As an account holder, you're able to sign up for a one-on-one meeting with your advisor anytime throughout the year to discuss your taxes in more detail and simplify your finances. Plus, you've always got the option to send questions over to Visor's team of tax experts for personalized advice and tips. (And please, feel free — they "love taxes (much) more than you do," so says their website.)
Ready to get your 2018 taxes sorted out? Head over to the BIZ Experiences Store, where you can have your basic tax return (including Federal and State) filed through Visor for just $89 (a savings of 55 percent). As an added perk for our readers, that limited-time deal includes your choice of one of the following add-on tax situations for free: sales of stock, equity, or cryptocurrency or self-employment income (a $99 value).
