“Our goal is to help entrepreneurs focus more on their business’ core functions so that they can properly address the priorities that need their attention” – Geraldine, Taxumo

It’s hard being a parent and an entrepreneur, but this is what I want. Nowadays, at least in the Philippines, families struggle to make ends meet. I guess this is also true for most parts of the world, and my family is no different. The norm would be a stable, double income household where both parents are working full-time. However, against the grain, I always knew that my path was to become an entrepreneur.

So with this in mind, I resigned from my corporate job back in 2012 and became a “mompreneur” — a rarely seen, thought to be mythical creature who successfully juggles her responsibilities with her business, her baby, and her husband. Beyond that image, however, that we have got everything covered and have mastered the art of time management, the reality is that most of us spend most of our hours managing our business, often becoming a point of argument with our better halves. I would love to have more time to relax and have fun with our daughter.

Unfortunately, I just can’t ignore the fact that I do have a lot to do as an entrepreneur, especially when tax deadline comes and I have to dig through all my records to make sure my submissions are up to standard. This does eat up a lot of my time and causes a lot of mental anguish: this is the first time I’m doing this and I am definitely not an expert! What if I make a mistake? What if I have to pay penalties? How much longer is this form going to be? This is what led us to develop Taxumo.

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The Problem

As entrepreneurs, one of the most tedious tasks that we do is to compute and file our taxes. We painstakingly log each and every expense and income. We compute our tax dues, and, as much as we can, try to abide by accounting principles, tax rules, and regulations, as we best understand them. For the majority of us, we have no recourse but to outsource the process to experts. For most small businesses like me, to freelance CPAs. We completely trust what they suggest, because, honestly, we don’t know better. We then stand in line for hours in the Internal Revenue Office or the bank to pay and file for our taxes. And get this, on average, South East Asian tax payers spend 247 hours preparing their taxes.

To allow SMB’s, Freelancers, and Professionals to spend more time on their businesses instead of their taxes, my husband, an IT professional for the past 15 years, and I, together with a tax expert, and a developer wunderkind, created Taxumo, a web and mobile application. In just 1 click, it generates the necessary tax forms the user needs to submit to the government.  It also has the Kimarite feature that automatically computes the lowest tax dues the user has to pay – no expertise needed in tax laws & loopholes to maximise their tax savings. Lastly, users can submit those forms and pay directly to the government through the app.

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The Journey

This entrepreneurship journey is new for us and we are both new to the tech startup industry. Individually, we came from different backgrounds. I was an account executive in an advertising agency, but my longest corporate stint was working for a bank for almost 7 years, developing and handling cash solutions products for large corporate clients and industries.

EJ on the other hand is the Chief Technology Officer of Wunderman International Philippines, with an impressive background on technology, SAP, and ERP solutions.

Alex is our resident tax expert, an instructor in esteemed educational institutions in the country and partner in his own accounting firm. Dexter is one the rare MEAN stack experts in the PH – an expert in security and scalability, he is our partner in creating the app that will soon be in our user’s hands.

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Our journey, luckily, has been great so far, having received advice and insightful comments from different mentors and tech stars who we have met here in Manila.

Being new and hopeful, we were fortunate enough to pitch at the Philippine Qualifiers for the Echelon Asia’s TOP100 2016 and we were happy that this venue gave us the platform to meet different angel investors who were willing to back up our idea. We are so grateful and we are truly excited to pitch on stage in Singapore.

The Vision

Our goal is to help entrepreneurs focus more on their business’ core functions so that they can properly address the priorities that need their attention. In this fast paced world, we need to adapt but at the same time, know our priorities. We will make solutions that will help make your entrepreneurial life easier.

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Impressed with Taxumo? Want to meet the the founders and 99 other startups like them? What are you waiting for? Come on down to Echelon Asia Summit 2016, where all TOP100 startups will be strutting their stuff and doing their best to wow audiences. Get your tickets now, and see you there this June!