Virtual tax assistant TaxTim now speaks Afrikaans, isiXhosa and isiZulu

Ventureburn recently wrote about TaxTim, the approachable, virtual tax assistant who helps South Africans complete their tax returns by asking simple questions, in plain English. Starting today, TaxTim will be able to converse in Afrikaans, isiXhosa and isiZulu as well.

“Despite only 8.2% of South Africans speaking English, SARS continues to provide help in this language only, ignoring the other 10 official languages. We are delighted to announce that TaxTim has now made it easier for the majority of South Africans to get and stay confidently tax compliant. For the first time, 63% of South Africans will have access to online tax assistance in their home language,” says TaxTim co-founder Evan Robinson.

While the entire website is not translated, the core product is — this includes the dialogue with TaxTim, the tax definitions page and the step-by-step guides for getting a tax number and using eFiling. Essentially, all the content needed to navigate the tax system and file a return now has multi-language support.

TaxTim made use of three qualified and experienced freelance translators through the South African Translators Institute (SATI) to add multi-language support.

By answering Tim’s questions, Tim collects the information needed to fill out a user’s tax return. With TaxTim’s guidance, a user can then submit the completed tax return to the South African Revenue Service (SARS) eFiling system or print it to submit in person.

Beyond simply helping with tax filing, TaxTim provides a valuable overview of the tax filing process, and does a great job as serving as a resource, especially for first time tax return filers.

In a country with 50-million citizens and only five million tax payers, the addition of multi-language support makes TaxTim a welcome addition in not only making the process of filing tax returns dramatically less daunting, but in educating prospective taxpayers.