Taxfix misses sales targets

As recently as the summer, the Berlin-based start-up achieved a Unicorn rating. But the 2021 financial statements show that the company is not growing as strongly as expected.

Taxifix published its annual financial statements for 2021 and showed high deficits there. The Berlin-based start-up generated about 21.8 million euros. This means that the increase in revenue is around 63 percent compared to the previous year - but the start-up actually wanted to achieve an increase of 100 to 150 percent. This contrasts with a loss of 43 million euros, as Gründerszene first reported.

This is mainly due to sluggish business in Italy and France, the company says. Founded in 2016, the tax startup offers users to do their income tax return via app. Taxfix currently takes 39.99 euros for the final step and form submission, which also accounts for the majority of its revenue.

To raise awareness of its core business and other features, the company spent 29.8 million euros on marketing last year. That's an increase of about 70 percent over the previous year. The original plan was to limit the increase in marketing spending to 50 percent. Because all employees on short-time work had to do a tax return, Taxfix made its services available to new customers free of charge and advertised them heavily. This allowed the company to gain users, but it fell well short of its revenue targets. Still in spring, Taxfix raised more than 200 million euros and was valued as a unicorn in the process.