Tax season 2024 wasn’t incremental. It was transformative.

This year proved—conclusively—that embedding tax filing directly into financial platforms works at scale, delivers better outcomes, and sets a new bar for what taxpayers and financial services companies should expect. Our achievements in building a suite of smarter tax products, powered by AI, combining federal and state in a single flow, and betting on native national e-file coverage paid off. The results speak for themselves.

A fundamentally better experience for taxpayers

For decades, tax filing has been disconnected from the rest of people’s financial lives. That’s the root problem.

Money lives in a bank, a payroll app, an investment platform—but tax prep has been stuck in a silo. Every year, millions of Americans are forced to reconstruct their financial year from scratch, only to drop it into clunky, paywalled software built for the lowest common denominator.

No surprise, then, that the IRS reports most Americans spend over 13 hours and more than $250 just to file.

This year, april showed there’s a better way.

By embedding filing directly into the financial apps people already use—and auto-pulling the data they already have—we delivered a tax experience that’s not just easier, but fundamentally better. And with a combined federal and state flow, we eliminated one of the biggest pain points: duplicate questions, disconnected logic, and awkward handoffs between systems.

• Median time to file: 22 minutes, 39 seconds

• 63 Net Promoter Score (NPS) — based on over 12K reviews

• 4.6 Trustpilot rating

• W-2 integration cut median filing time by nearly 50%

Service and coverage expansion

We didn’t just scale. We expanded the scope of what embedded filing can do.

This season, our clients were able to offer a broader suite of services, built for more kinds of taxpayers:

• april became the first nationally licensed e-file provider purpose-built for embedded platforms—with native coverage for 1099 income, stock and crypto investments, itemized deductions, HSAs, retirement, and more.

• We launched aprilPro, a digitally led, professionally supported filing service for taxpayers and small businesses with more complex returns or a preference for human guidance.

• We introduced Pro Review, an add-on to our DIY product that lets taxpayers get the confidence of a human-reviewed return—fast.

What embedded tax did for businesses

The benefits to our 40+ clients ranging from wealth management advisories to credit building apps to small business accounting, including Chime, Step, and Compound, were just as clear. Embedding tax filing drove stronger performance across every meaningful business metric:

• 50% YoY increase in conversion

• 94% average federal refund deposit rate

• One credit union hit 100% refund capture; a neobank hit 98%

• A fintech was able to re-engage 4% of lapsed users with a conditional tax offer

• 95% of taxpayers opted in to share data back with clients, unlocking smarter personalization and downstream product adoption

This isn’t just about offering a new feature or tapping into the $300B refund economy, solving an annual headache is proving to deepen client relationships and make platforms stickier.

The compounding effect of return filers and multi-product adoption

Returning filers weren’t just loyal—they were high-performing. They moved through the flow faster, with fewer errors and lower abandonment. Clients offering multiple april products saw stronger engagement across the board.

• 2x higher conversion rate among returning filers

• april-powered refund deposits grew 18% YoY for repeat clients

• 26% higher conversion rate among filers who also used april’s tax planning products

This is the april flywheel in action.

Looking ahead

This was the year embedded filing shifted from concept to reality. Tax season 2024 validated the full model: the tech, the integrations, the client ecosystem, and the scale.

We’re not chasing feature parity with legacy players. We’re rebuilding the category — and turning tax into a growth engine.

Next, we’re expanding our year-round products with new tax planning use cases, including quarterly tax payment calculations and stock sale tax simulations — tools that will reshape how small businesses and wealth management clients make critical decisions and plan for the future. Our AI-powered tax engine, built to ingest existing financial data, makes it faster and easier to deliver accurate results and help businesses launch new solutions.

Tax season 2024 was a big milestone. The momentum ahead is even bigger.