{"id":122568,"date":"2025-05-22T12:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T12:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/122568\/"},"modified":"2025-05-22T12:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T12:58:11","slug":"filed-raises-17m-to-automate-the-drudgery-of-tax-prep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/122568\/","title":{"rendered":"Filed raises $17M to automate the drudgery of tax prep"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a new accounting software in town, coming in with a fresh $17.2 million raise and a desire to shake things up. The company, Filed<\/a>, hopes to automate the grunt work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tax industry is facing a genuine crisis,\u201d Leroy Kerry, Filed\u2019s co-founder CEO, told TechCrunch. Many CPAs are approaching retirement while a dwindling number of students are entering the field, he said, citing much-quoted research from a 2021 report<\/a> on the topic from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirms simply don\u2019t have enough people to process returns efficiently. Meanwhile, professionals are drowning in paperwork, spending nearly half their time on low-value tasks that could be automated,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So he teamed up with Atul Ramachandran, now the company\u2019s CTO, to launch Filed, which uses AI to complete the lifecycle of a tax return.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reads documents, uses reasoning to apply each firm\u2019s specific approach to tax strategy, and then enters that data into their existing software systems,\u201d Kerry said. He said that when the AI notices a scenario that requires human input, it flags it for review, \u201ckeeping humans in control while eliminating the tedious work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are others in this space, including tax preparation and accounting assistant software, Black Ore and Basis, respectively. Kerry says his product is different from others because the AI was created specifically for tax workflow, and it directly plugs into software systems rather than forcing clients to overhaul existing tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The venture firm Northzone led Filed\u2019s $17.2 million round, with Day One Ventures and Neo also participating in the round.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It seems life has come full circle for Kerry, who didn\u2019t often see people like him running tech companies. He grew up in South London, raised by a single mom in low-income housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a CEO wasn\u2019t something I saw possible,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, he knew he wanted to become a businessman, \u201cwhatever that meant at the time.\u201d He started working at a call center while finishing up school and university. He didn\u2019t have the grades during primary school, he said, but he did have grit. He studied architecture in college, graduated on a Friday, and was back on the sales floor by Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin a year, I was managing a team and working with startups as clients,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of those startups became a unicorn, and I ended up joining them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was his foray into the world of venture and startups. He\u2019s since worked as a chief of staff at high-growth companies, working for businesses both in the U.K. and Sweden. \u201cThose years taught me how to build through chaos and stay relentlessly focused on the customer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

His ambition led him to the U.S. to launch his own company. Kerry said he and his team went straight to the source, sitting in small tax offices in Colorado and Arizona, observing how teams still relied on paper and fax machines. Filed will use its fresh capital to expand its team and hire more tax engineers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur long-term vision extends beyond return preparation to become the foundational AI infrastructure for the entire tax industry \u2014 transforming everything from client collaboration to document management and audit preparation,\u201d Kerry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe industry has been waiting for its AI moment, and we\u2019re just getting started,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a new accounting software in town, coming in with a fresh $17.2 million raise and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[323,51,3134,54518,54519,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-122568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-entrepreneurship","11":"tag-northzone","12":"tag-tax-accounting","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114551606902271125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}