In a Nutshell
pros
- Intuitive, easy-to-use app with inviting user interface
- Questionnaire format makes accounting for expenses painless
- Automated tracking and account linking
cons
- Not built for businesses with more complex accounting needs
- Less useful for those who already separate out business purchases
Keeper Tax at a Glance
Pricing
Expert Help
Mobile app
Customer Support
Filing Fees
Keeper Tax Plans
Keeper Tax comes with a simple pricing structure. It offers new subscribers a 7-day free trial that then renews into a single plan costing $14 a month.
Optional Add-Ons
The service offers a single tax-filing add-on. For an $89 fee, Keeper Tax will file a customer’s federal tax return based on the expense records collected and maintained throughout the tax year. This fee is payable every year a customer chooses to file their taxes through the app.
How much does Keeper Tax cost? (Plan Pricing, Service Fees)
Keeper Tax’s core offering costs a flat $14 a month, which puts it slightly above the industry average (when comparing against other tax and accounting software subscription plans for the self-employed). For example, here’s how much other tax and accounting software companies charge for comparable plans:
- QuickBooks’ Self-employed plan: $15 per month ($7.50 for the first three months)
- GoDaddy Bookeeping’s Essentials plan: $9.99 per month
- Freshbooks’ Lite plan: $15 per month ($6 for the first 6 months)
- Xero’s Early plan: $12 per month
- Zoho’s Standard plan: $15 per month
- Wave Accounting: Free (add-ons and suite additions are extra)
- Sage Accounting Start: $10 per month
How does Keeper Tax work?
When customers first link their bank, credit, and debit card accounts, Keeper Tax uses its AI-driven algorithm to categorize past expenses, separating out business-related purchases, costs, and transactions from everyday, non-business expenses.
Keeper Tax then runs in the background, monitoring linked accounts for updates. When new purchases are made, the app instantly evaluates and categorizes them, putting recordkeeping on auto-pilot for business owners.
This feature is especially useful for freelancers, independent contractors, and other self-employed individuals who don’t maintain separate checking or credit card accounts for business purposes and instead co-mingle their personal and business finances.
By automatically distinguishing between individual and business transactions, Keeper Tax helps sole proprietors segregate out their deductible business expenses from their non-deductible personal expenditures, allowing for higher deductions and greater tax savings.
Is Keeper Tax reliable and safe?
Keeper Tax is trusted, safe, and legitimate. Widely considered a rising contender in the tax and accounting software industry, it raised a $15 million Series A led by venture capital group Matrix Partners in April of 2021 and is on track for even further growth.
The platform is well regarded by freelancers and other sole proprietors as well. Keeper Tax advertises a 4.8-star rating on its site, an average satisfaction score taken from reviews given by “thousands of freelancers.”
Independent consumer review sites assign Keeper Tax similarly high scores: the company boasts a 4.8-star average from 96 reviews on Google, a 3.8-star rating from TechRadar, and a straight 5-star verdict from 19 reviewers on ProductHunt.
Help and Support
Keeper Tax offers support by email. Its customer service team can be reached at support@Keeper Tax.com.
The company also has an Ask an Accountant feature, a question-and-answer-type service for tax and accounting-related queries. In addition, the platform offers a wide variety of free resources, including a number of tax calculators and tools, such as the Quarterly Estimated Tax, a business loan tool, and a tax rate estimator.
Though Keeper Tax’s website does not contain an FAQ section, the website does have a “1099 Tax University” section that features full-length posts addressing common myths and questions related to tax deductions for the self-employed.
Finally, the site contains a blog packed with even more accounting, tax, and expense deduction tips. You can even filter the blog by occupation to find information on job-specific deductions. Artists, for example, can deduct the cost of things like canvases, brushes, paint, and studio rent, while rideshare drivers for platforms such as Uber or Lyft can deduct the cost of car insurance, gas, maintenance, and more.
What about the Keeper app?
Keeper Tax offers an app, and it’s available on both iOS and Android. In fact, true to the company’s commitment to offering convenient, on-the-go bookkeeping, the app serves as the primary platform and offers all the features solopreneurs need to link and (automatically) track their expenses.
Bottom Line
Keeper Tax is a tax and bookkeeping platform built for freelancers, independent contractors, and solopreneurs of all stripes. Less than 3 years old, it is a relatively new entrant to the decades-old tax preparation and accounting software market. Nonetheless, it provides a solid offering with a compelling value proposition and several notable features.
For starters, the app’s unique ability to identify and set apart business-related transactions from personal expenditures is a major plus for sole proprietors and others who do business without observing business formalities. Additionally, the platform’s $14 per month set-it-and-forget-it, auto-tracking feature—along with its integrated tax-filing feature (available as an $89 add-on)—means that solopreneurs and gig workers can easily automate their bookkeeping and tax reporting duties and get back to tasks that drive their top and bottom lines, fast.
However, the app isn’t the best choice for growing businesses that need sophisticated accounting tools, nor is it for those who already separate out their business transactions. Nonetheless, it’s a well-crafted tool that caters well to its niche audience: those flying solo.
FAQs
Q: Is Keeper Tax worth it?
A: Keeper Tax’s core bookkeeping and expense tracking offering costs $14 per month. It offers an $89 tax-filing add-on (payable annually), which enables users to have their tax returns automatically filled out using their existing business expense history.
Q: How much do 1099 [independent contractors] pay in taxes?
A: Since independent contractors are both employee and employer, they owe double the payroll (FICA) tax as their W-2 counterparts—15.3% (12.4% in social security taxes + 2.9% in Medicare taxes) as opposed to 7.65% (6.2% in social security taxes + 1.45% in Medicare taxes).
However, self-employed individuals can deduct the employer portion (i.e. one-half) of the payroll tax owed to the IRS as a business expense. Additionally, 1099 contractors are only taxed on net income—that is, they are allowed to deduct business expenses (e.g. rent, supplies, internet, business insurance, etc.) from total revenue.
Q: What is a 1099 [for] tax [purposes]?
A: A 1099 form is used to report non-employee income—also known as self-employment income—earned by an individual who works as an independent contractor.
