The IRS estimates the average tax return takes about 13 hours. april's median is 22 minutes. The gap is the entire business.
Every spring, Americans pour an estimated 6.5 billion hours into filing their taxes. april, a New York company founded in 2021, started from a contrarian question: what if you never had to visit a tax website at all - what if the app that already knows your income just handled it?
That premise turned april into infrastructure rather than a destination. Instead of competing for anxious filers each April, it built an AI-powered tax engine and lets other companies - payroll providers, banks, wealth platforms, fintechs - embed filing, planning, and estimates directly inside their own products. The tax experience is white-labeled, mobile-first, and pre-populated with data the partner already holds.
The approach demanded work most startups avoid. april wrote its calculation and e-file engine from the ground up and pursued national e-file coverage - a regulatory grind so steep that only roughly ten companies have ever completed it, and none in more than 15 years until april did in early 2025.
The payoff is speed and reach. Across more than 50 partners, april has reached millions of Americans and processed hundreds of thousands of returns, with 95% of users filing for free and refund deposits landing at rates above 98%. It is, in effect, quietly rebuilding a piece of American tax plumbing.
