Interview with Arjun Kumar of Taxd.co.uk
As regulation, AI, and digital reporting reshape tax, businesses need smarter tools and expert guidance to stay compliant without adding complexity.
How is technology transforming the way businesses and individuals manage tax? The answer lies in combining automation with expert oversight to make tax more accessible, efficient, and continuous. Arjun Kumar, co-founder of Taxd and former Tax Director at PwC, has spent years advising clients on complex tax matters before helping build a platform designed to simplify compliance. In this interview, he explains why traditional tax advisory models are being redefined and what businesses should expect as regulation and AI continue to reshape the industry.
Your move from a global advisory firm into building something new is an interesting one. What led you to make that shift, and how did your background shape the way you saw the problems in tax?
I spent years at PwC managing taxes and tax systems, where I saw first-hand how slow, manual processes could be made more efficient with the right data and automation. While there was plenty of technical expertise, the traditional firm model simply did not incentivise long-term investment. Furthermore, the high fees meant that only the wealthiest individuals or the biggest companies could afford such expertise.
The goal was to take what the best advisers do and make it accessible to the 13 million people who file a return every year, rather than just the few who can afford a Big Four firm for complex returns.
My background, which was a mix of tax and technology, made that gap obvious and spurred my decision to make a change. My co-founder, Eamon, came from that same world of PwC tax planning. Having been a software engineer at university and a part-qualified chartered accountant, he shared my perspective. We both kept seeing smart people overpay or get stressed by tasks that should have been routine. James, our CTO and co-founder, joined us as well, having gone to university with Eamon and worked with me on a previous project.
Ultimately, the goal was to take what the best advisers do and make it accessible to the 13 million people who file a return every year, rather than just the few who can afford a Big Four firm for complex returns. We also wanted to provide the kind of tax efficiency advice that is often missed by services focused solely on compliance.
The tax space is changing quickly alongside broader shifts in how businesses operate. What’s been happening that made the traditional advisory model feel like it needed rethinking?
The traditional advisory model is struggling to keep pace because it remains built around the billable hour and manual data processing. This approach does not translate in the modern world, nor does it fit how people work today. The system often incentivises firms to maximise profits in the short term, rather than investing for the future, because partners typically take a profit share on an annual basis.
Meanwhile, client expectations have shifted significantly. People now expect digital, self-serve, and on-demand experiences across every other part of their financial lives, such as banking, payments, and investing. Tax has simply been left behind in that evolution.
At the same time, individual income has become far more fragmented. People now manage multiple streams of revenue, including employment, side businesses, rental property, overseas income, and equity. The outdated model of having one accountant meet a client once a year struggles to cope with that level of complexity.
Additionally, the pandemic accelerated a rise in cross-border living and remote work. As a result, more people now have UK tax obligations while based abroad, a scenario that traditional high-street accountants are often ill-equipped to handle.
Finally, regulation is forcing the transition regardless of preference. Making Tax Digital means that manual, paper-based, once-a-year filing is being phased out. We are now in a position where digitisation is a mandate rather than a choice.
What made you feel this was the right moment to build something more simplified and user-friendly in such a complex, regulated environment?
For me, three things lined up: technology matured, customer expectations shifted, and regulation started forcing digitisation. My perspective encouraged me to view complexity as an opportunity, not a barrier. The harder the rules, the more value there is in software that handles them so the user doesn’t have to learn them. For me, again, trust was the thing to get right: people won’t hand over their tax to a black box. So, we built it as software plus real qualified experts on chat and call, not one or the other. We did things that didn’t scale – calls with thousands of potential customers.
Where are you seeing the most friction or confusion around tax for businesses today?
Definitely when it comes to knowing what you actually need to declare, especially with multiple income sources or anything cross-border. People are scared of getting it wrong more than they mind paying. Changes such as the FIG Regime (Non Dom Abolished) have created huge new complexities.
Another area is allowable expenses and reliefs: landlords unsure on repairs vs. capital costs and mortgage interest; directors unsure what they can claim, meaning money gets left on the table.
Additionally, limited company compliance is a maze: CT600, annual accounts, confirmation statements, and owners often don’t know what’s due when, or what their accountant is even doing for the fee. Fees for companies are therefore much higher, but before us, there wasn’t really any other option.
Opaque pricing and slow responses from traditional accountants are other areas of confusion. People don’t know what they’ll be charged and wait days for a reply to a simple question. Now, with Making Tax Digital, millions of landlords and sole traders are about to face quarterly digital reporting for the first time and most don’t yet know it’s coming or what to do.
Tax systems still feel largely designed for specialists. How does that gap show up for founders and finance teams when they’re making decisions?
I know the language itself can be quite confusing, and HMRC often uses aggressive letters to scare taxpayers. HMRC will ask you about your ‘expenses’ but not give you much guidance, leaving the onus on the taxpayer to research. We bridge that gap.
Also, individuals are often looking at how they can make more money, but forget that a 45% tax saving is a saving that will outperform most funds. We ensure that the language used and support are aligned with the customer journey. For example, a landlord will see what a landlord needs to see, a freelancer gets the freelancer experience – and so on.
As companies scale and expand across markets, what tax challenges tend to surface earlier than most expect?
Cross-border personal tax hits founders and early employees fast. Relocating, hiring abroad, or having non-resident shareholders triggers obligations people don’t anticipate. Having to deal with foreign tax authorities can be a big headache in and of itself.
You need to ensure your tax advisors speak to each other and keep you compliant and efficient across both jurisdictions.
Getting things wrong can lead to huge fines, stress and loss of business. Ensuring your tax is correct from a Home and Host perspective is very important. You also need to ensure your tax advisors speak to each other and keep you compliant and efficient across both jurisdictions.
As many companies hire abroad for cost saving, it’s important to ensure that they are meeting labour laws around the world. VAT is another big potential headache for founders selling goods and services globally, so ensure you have a process to deal with VAT/sales tax reporting requirements.
With AI and real-time reporting becoming more embedded in finance, what is actually changing in how tax work gets done on the ground?
The shift is from annual and retrospective to continuous and real-time, Making Tax Digital mandates quarterly updates, so tax becomes an ongoing process, not a January scramble.
AI and automation handle the repetitive, rules-based work, categorising transactions, populating forms, flagging what’s missing, which is most of what junior tax work used to be.
All of that frees human experts to focus on judgement: the genuinely complex, advisory, cross-border cases where experience matters.
It’s about connecting the right data to the right places and with the right people to support where needed. It’s software doing the heavy lifting and humans supporting it. Tax is stressful and extremely important to get right, so the model that wins is automation with qualified human oversight, that’s deliberately how we’ve built Taxd, not full hands-off AI.
Looking ahead, how do you think the relationship between regulation, technology, and tax practice will evolve over the next few years?
MTD is a big one. Huge impact in VAT recently and now Income Tax. Companies House and HMRC are closing their WebFiling/Corporation Tax services which will push people to filing accounts with real software too.
The adviser’s role shifts up the value chain, away from manual compliance and toward strategic advice, with technology doing the heavy lifting underneath.
My view is this: tax should ultimately be largely autonomous; handled quietly by technology in the background, with experts on hand for the moments that need them. That’s the future we’re building toward.
