This week, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) unveiled the Endless Frontier Act (EFA).

This newsletter doesn’t usually cover new legislation, much less proposed bills. But EFA is an exception since it seeks to turbocharge American “discovery, creation, and commercialization of critical tech.” By that, the lawmakers mean every technology you read about in this newsletter. 

EFA’s core proposals. There are three principal parts to the proposed bill:

• Restructure the National Science Foundation into the National Science and Technology Foundation (NSTF)
• In the NSTF, stand up a Technology Directorate that receives $100 billion over five years and operates like DARPA
• Hand the Commerce Department $10 billion to invest across 10-15 regional tech hubs over five years

This is great news for U.S. universities and businesses because EFA would pad R&D budgets, establish new scholarships, and create cutting-edge labs and fabrication plants. 

What’s driving the frontier mindset? The private sector overtook Washington in R&D investment four decades ago. EFA’s sponsors want to expand the pool of capital so that all of Washington’s tech priorities are advanced in the U.S.

The other reason for EFA, which its sponsors explicitly call out: China. While Beijing’s bid for tech supremacy is better described as a “slow burn” rather than a “Sputnik moment,” the country’s tech industrial base is now a genuine contender with the U.S. There’s more to come: 

• China plans to invest $1.4 trillion in emerging tech over the next six years. 
• Chinese chipmaker SMIC recently announced a $2 billion investment from state-backed funds. 
• Tencent will spend $70 billion on tech infrastructure over the next five years. 
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“The U.S. needs to pursue with all-of-the-above strategy and intensify efforts,” a person familiar with the legislation said in a recent interview.

As Bill of Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” could tell you, EFA may never see the light of day. But adding $$$ to tech R&D and accelerating the U.S.-China tech decoupling are bipartisan priorities.

Cryptocurrency investors in the United States are receiving letters from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which are proposing backdated tax payments relating to the trade of virtual assets. 

As reported by Bloomberg, some traders are receiving notices asking for input on revised tax returns, based on estimates of profit generated by cryptocurrency-related activities.

The CP2000 notices have been sent in recent weeks, and while they do acknowledge mistakes in past tax returns might be due to cryptocurrency platforms and exchanges rather than individuals, they do signal a clampdown by the IRS on the burgeoning industry. 

In July, the IRS also sent warnings to investors to make them aware that tax may be owed on their trading activities. Some investors received demands for the disclosure of cryptocurrency trades between 2013 and 2017. 

An IRS spokesperson said that the latest batch of warning notices are sent to taxpayers when discrepancies between tax returns and information obtained from third parties are flagged. 

Aletter shared with CoinDesk estimates that an investor owes close to $4,000 in taxes and interest for potentially misreported cryptocurrency profits during the 2017 fiscal year. 

"We received information from third parties such as employers or financial institutions that doesn't match the information you reported on your tax return," the letter reads. 

Recipients can accept the changes and make any further payments required, or they can challenge the IRS' decision if they have supporting evidence. 

According to the IRS website, CP2000 receivers should respond within 30 days even if only to say they need more time. The notices are not straight bills or demands, but what the IRS calls "a proposal [that] informs you about the information we have received, and how it affects your tax."

The IRS won a landmark case against Coinbase in 2017 which forced the cryptocurrency exchange to hand over the records of 14,000 customers that purchased, sold, or obtained over $20,000 in cryptocurrency between 2013 and 2015.

 The only sure things in this life, according to Ben Franklin, are death and taxes. And a new startup called Visor has just raised $9 million in financing to make one of them as painless as possible.

Unlike Dr. Jack Kevorkian (remember “Doctor Death”), Visor won’t kill anyone, but it may ring the death knell for the high-end tax advisors that most Americans can’t even access to get help filing and paying their taxes.  It’s like having a personalized accountant for the cost of a high-end do-it-yourself tax-prep service.

The $9 million Visor raised came from the venture capital firm, Defy, with participation from Unusual Ventures, SVB Capital and existing investors like Obvious Ventures, Fika Ventures, and Boxgroup, who had put a previous $6.5 million into the company. 

The idea for the company had been percolating for co-founder and chief executive Gernot Zacke since he settled in the U.S. 

Growing up in Sweden, Zacke was exposed to a much different process for paying taxes. “The experience of filing taxes in Sweden is that you receive a message from the government that stated how much you made and how much you were withholding. That’s it,” said Zacke. “Taxes should be as easy as ordering a cab.”

That’s the service that Visor aims to provide.

“If you think about the market there are two ways to get your taxes done. There’s the DIY space, and then there are other online services, but it requires the taxpayer to fill out the forms, and it leaves the taxpayer with a little bit of anxiety,” said Zacke. “We’re delivering the CPA experience through the convenience of a web app and a mobile app.”

On average, Americans spend about 13 hours each year dealing with taxes, and the average American doesn’t have the benefits of a professional advisor who can help optimize the process. That’s what Visor wants to provide.

“You provide the same amount of information you provide to a CPA or TurboTax… we make sure that that information is filed securely on AWS and shared between the docs and the backend,” said Zacke. 

The target customers for Zacke’s services are folks who have had a change to their tax situation – whether moving, buying a home, or any other life event; or people who have had a CPA and don’t want to pay the higher fees, he said.
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Visor currently has an operations team of around 34 people split between San Francisco and Atlanta.
“Taxpayers spend $20 billion a year to get their taxes prepared and are stuck between spending hours filling out DIY tax software and hiring an expensive CPA,” said Zacke, in a statement. “

Ricky Lavina was an auditor at Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, one of the largest accounting firms in the world. He had worked there for over four years and was expecting to eventually be a partner.
But during the Uber ride to his office, Lavina began to wonder why there wasn't a way to easily pair real accountants like himself with people who needed help filing their taxes. He became envious of the Uber driver's professional flexibility.

When you set out to file your taxes, you have two options. You can submit all of your documents to a CPA, and have them do the dirty work for you, or you can file yourself with online services like TurboTax or H&R Block.

Then there's Tickmark, Lavina's seven-month-old startup that lets you file your taxes through a mobile app called Taxfyle. It's pitching itself as the "Uber for accountants," and it was recently named one of the best new apps in the App Store by Apple.

'We're turning the traditional CPA firm upside down," Lavina said in an interview.

Taxfyle, a chat-based messaging app for quickly filing your taxes, is designed to be dead simple. Once you give the app some basic info and submit tax documents by taking photos with your phone, it connects you with a CPA that does your paperwork and asks you follow-up questions.

300 CPAs are on call 24/7 in the app, and Lavina said it takes 60 seconds to submit tax information, 90 seconds for a CPA to take the request, and generally 24 hours for all of the necessary paperwork to be completed. Taxfyle lets you take photos of your tax documents, like a W2 or 1099 form, with your phone and upload them directly in the app.

Taxfyle's CPAs have on average 14 years of experience in their field and they look through all documents submitted through the app.

"No one else is doing this," said Lavina. "No one else has an army of CPAs like we do. No one else is pairing them with customers at very competitive rates."

Filing taxes with Taxfyle starts at $49, and adding itemized deductions brings the cost to $100. Taxfyle also charges $3 for three years of audit protection. TurboxTax's mid-tier package starts at $55 and charges $40 for audit defense.

While TurboTax is the obvious elephant in the room, Lavina isn’t worried. "We don't see [TurboTax] as our main competitor. You can always paint your house for cheaper," he said. "But there's going to be a huge market of people out there who don't have the time to do it or don't have the skill set to paint their house."
"We see our main competitors as the brick and mortar, the Liberty Tax and the H&R Block, that have billions and billions of dollars in market space already."

Intuit, which owns TurboTax, recently debuted its own chat-based tax filing app called Tada that works in a similar way to Taxfyle. The app, which is currently in beta, costs $40 to file state and federal returns.
Lavina doesn't seem scared about Intuit encroaching on Taxfyle's territory.

"We're the future of a CPA firm. We're not the future of filing your taxes. He said many users are asking for the app to handle more everyday book keeping, and he plans to expand the kind of services Taxfyle provides.
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"There's no reason why the vehicle we created should just be for transporting tax jobs," he said. "It could also be transporting bookkeeping jobs, payroll jobs, even audits."
For now, Lavina isn't shy about his small team's potential. "This is the next Uber," he said.