HardCompliance SaaS

TaxGuard

AI that reads freelancer invoices and catches VAT/GST mistakes before they become audit nightmares - stop paying tax you don't owe

The Problem

Companies with 50-500 employees hiring international freelancers and agencies waste 20+ hours monthly verifying tax compliance on invoices. Finance teams don't know if that UK contractor should charge 20% VAT, if the Australian agency's 10% GST applies, or which US states require sales tax. Mistakes lead to: paying tax twice, audit penalties ($5K-50K), or underpaying and owing back taxes. Manual checking across 40+ tax jurisdictions is impossible.

The Solution

Automated invoice compliance checker that ingests invoices via email forwarding or upload, extracts vendor details and tax charges using OCR, cross-references against up-to-date regional tax rules (EU VAT thresholds, reverse charge mechanisms, US nexus rules, GST registration requirements), flags errors with specific violations ('This UK vendor should not charge VAT - reverse charge applies'), and provides corrected invoice templates. Integrates with accounting software to block payment until compliance verified.

MVP Features

1

Invoice upload (PDF, email forwarding to dedicated address)

2

OCR extraction of vendor name, address, amount, tax charged, tax ID

3

Vendor location detection and tax jurisdiction identification

4

Tax rule database covering US sales tax, EU VAT, UK VAT, Canada GST/HST, Australia GST, India GST

5

Compliance checker flagging incorrect tax application

6

Specific error messages ('Vendor should use reverse charge', 'Missing valid VAT number', 'Sales tax applies in this state')

7

Suggested corrected invoice with proper tax treatment

8

Dashboard showing all invoices by status (compliant/needs review/error)

9

QuickBooks Online integration to import vendor data

10

Email notifications for compliance issues

11

Audit trail showing why invoice was flagged

12

Knowledge base explaining tax rules per region

13

Bulk CSV upload for processing multiple invoices

14

Monthly compliance report summarizing risks avoided

Monetization

Tiered SaaS: $149/month for up to 100 invoices processed, $349/month for 101-500 invoices, $749/month for 501-2000 invoices, enterprise custom pricing for 2000+. Alternative model: $2-3 per invoice processed (consumption-based). Premium features: Custom tax rule creation for niche industries ($99/month), audit report generation ($49/month), Bill.com integration ($79/month). Target 80 customers at $350 average = $336K ARR Year 1.

Required Skills

PDF parsing and OCR (Tesseract/AWS Textract)Tax regulation database design and maintenanceRules engine for complex conditional logicInternational tax law understanding (VAT/GST/sales tax)Accounting software APIs (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite)Email integration for invoice forwardingBackend development (Python/Node.js)Frontend dashboard for compliance reportsRegulatory data scraping and updates