Draper's TaxBit to add 1,700 high-paying jobs

By Brice Wallace 

TaxBit is in line for a tax credit.

The company plans to add up to 1,700 jobs in Draper over the next decade, boosted by a state tax credit incentive tied to those high-paying jobs.

Utah-based TaxBit Inc. produces cryptocurrency tax and accounting automation software, providing tax reports and back-end accounting, working with some of the county’s most prominent brokerages and CPA firms. TaxBit connects cryptocurrency transactions across every exchange so that clients can accurately file taxes, manage portfolios, and make tax-optimized trades.

“This is just the beginning,” Justin Woodward, co-founder and tax attorney at TaxBit, told the board of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (Go Utah) about the three-year-old company. “We’re excited for all this growth. … It’s just been phenomenal growing the business here and bringing such an emerging asset class and new technology to this ecosystem. We’re looking forward to partnering with Utah long-term.”

The Go Utah board approved a tax credit incentive of up to about $4.4 million over 10 years for the $70 million project, which is projected to create new wages of $654.6 million and new state tax revenues of $29.5 million during that period.

It was the first board meeting for Go Utah, formerly known as the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED).

The new jobs are expected to pay an average of $111,213, “which is pretty remarkable,” said Steve Neeleman, chairman of the board’s incentives committee.

“TaxBit has a unique business model and will be a fantastic addition to Utah’s tech sector,” Dan Hemmert, Go Utah’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “With this expansion, TaxBit will be hiring for various positions including CPAs, software developers, attorneys, implementation consultants, security, sales, marketing and many others.”

“It comes as no surprise that Utah company TaxBit is at the cutting edge of compliance technology for the exciting innovations in blockchain and cryptocurrency,” said Theresa A. Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah). “The legal and accounting talent here is bar-none and will help TaxBit grow and excel in the ever-changing world of fintech.”
Woodward told the GO Utah board that he and his brother, Austin Woodward, founded the company after seeing a problem with digital assets.

“Every single movement has some sort of tax and accounting consequence,” he said. “It is a large-scale data problem to automate all of the tax and account behind it and solve the industry so that we get proper tax reporting at scale.”

The company began by automating tax matters for consumer users, then advanced to brokerages. The IRS now is one of its largest clients, with TaxBit helping the agency with taxpayer examination audits on cryptocurrency.

In March, TaxBit announced a record-breaking $100 Million Series A funding round, led by Paradigm and Tiger Global. Others participating in the round were PayPal Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, investor Bill Ackman, Qualtrics co-founder and chairman Ryan Smith, Anthony Pompliano, former Venmo COO Michael Vaughan, Galaxy Digital, Valar Ventures, Collaborative, Global Founders Capital, Album Ventures, TTV Capital and Original Capital.