There is a gap between what neobanks think freelancers want and what freelancers actually struggle with. Neobanks have invested heavily in sleek interfaces, instant notifications, budgeting tools, and multi-currency accounts. These features are valued. But they address the day-to-day banking experience, not the moments that cause freelancers the most stress and cost them the most money.
Tax filing, compliance obligations, and end-of-year accounting are consistently cited by freelancers as their biggest financial pain points. Not payments. Not invoicing. Not card design. Taxes.
The Evidence From Freelancer Surveys
Multiple surveys across different markets tell a remarkably consistent story.
Studies of freelancer financial behaviour consistently find that tax preparation and filing rank as the single most stressful financial task. Freelancers report spending an average of 40 to 80 hours per year on tax-related administration, including record-keeping, receipt management, data entry, accountant communication, and government portal submissions.
In surveys of European freelancers, the cost of tax compliance is frequently cited as disproportionate to income, particularly in the first few years of freelancing. A freelancer earning 30,000 euros per year and paying 1,500 euros for tax preparation is spending 5% of gross income just on compliance costs. For many freelancers, this cost is higher than their banking fees, insurance premiums, or software subscriptions.
When asked what features they would most value in their banking app, freelancers consistently rank tax-related features highly. Automatic tax provisioning, tax liability estimation, and integrated filing are regularly among the top requested features in product surveys conducted by neobanks themselves.
What App Store Reviews Reveal
A telling source of user sentiment is the app store reviews of freelancer-focused neobanks. Users who are generally satisfied with the banking experience frequently mention what is missing.
Common patterns in reviews of platforms like Coconut, Kontist, Holvi, and similar freelancer-focused banks include requests for better tax estimation accuracy, frustration that expense categories do not map cleanly to tax return categories, complaints about the difficulty of exporting data in a format their accountant can use, and explicit requests for the app to handle tax filing directly.
The pattern is clear. Users love the banking experience. They tolerate the accounting features. They are disappointed by the absence of filing.
On platforms that do offer some form of tax integration, such as automatic VAT estimation or tax pot provisioning, the reviews are more positive but still consistently note that the integration stops short of actually filing. "It tells me how much I owe, but I still have to do the filing myself" is a sentiment expressed in various forms across multiple platforms.
The Accountant Relationship Problem
A significant portion of freelancers, particularly those in their first few years, do not have an accountant. They either cannot afford one, do not know how to find a good one, or do not believe their financial situation is complex enough to justify the cost.
These freelancers are self-filing. They are logging into government tax portals, trying to interpret tax codes, and making their best guess at which box their income and expenses should go in. Many of them are making errors, either in their favour (creating audit risk) or against their favour (overpaying tax).
For these users, a banking app that could handle their filing would not just be convenient. It would be transformative. It would eliminate the annual ordeal of government portal navigation, reduce errors, and ensure compliance without requiring the user to understand tax law.
For freelancers who do have an accountant, the banking app could still add value by streamlining the data transfer process. Instead of downloading CSVs, emailing them to the accountant, waiting for questions, and going back and forth over categorisation, the banking app could provide the accountant with direct access to the user's categorised data in a format that feeds directly into the filing workflow.
What Freelancers Actually Need
Based on the evidence from surveys, reviews, and behavioural data, the features freelancers most need from their banking app fall into a clear hierarchy.
At the base level, they need accurate transaction categorisation that maps to tax-relevant categories. Not just "food" and "transport," but "business meals," "travel for work," "office supplies," "professional development," and other categories that directly correspond to deductible expense lines on their tax return.
At the next level, they need real-time tax liability estimation. Not a rough percentage, but a computation based on their actual year-to-date income and expenses, applied against the current tax rates and thresholds in their jurisdiction. This should update automatically as transactions flow in, giving the freelancer a running view of what they owe.
At the next level, they need tax provisioning that is based on this computation. Automatically setting aside the right amount from each payment received, not a flat percentage that may be too high or too low, but a calculated amount that reflects their actual tax position.
At the top of the hierarchy, they need the return itself to be computed, reviewed by a professional, and filed. This is the capability that no neobank currently offers end-to-end within its own product. It is also the capability that would deliver the most value to the user and generate the most revenue for the platform.
The User Experience Gap
Consider two hypothetical freelancers.
Freelancer A uses a neobank that offers banking, invoicing, and expense tracking. At the end of the tax year, Freelancer A downloads a CSV, emails it to their accountant, answers a series of questions over email, waits two weeks, pays 800 euros, and eventually receives confirmation that their return has been filed. Total time: 4 to 6 hours of active effort, spread over several weeks. Total cost: 800 euros.
Freelancer B uses a neobank that offers banking, invoicing, expense tracking, and embedded tax filing. At the end of the tax year, Freelancer B opens their banking app, taps "File my tax return," confirms a few personal details that the app cannot infer from transaction data, and receives confirmation that a licensed accountant has reviewed and filed their return. Total time: 15 minutes. Total cost: included in their premium plan or charged as a per-filing fee at a fraction of the accountant's full price.
Freelancer B's experience is not hypothetical in concept. Every component of the technology exists today. Transaction data APIs exist. Tax computation engines exist. Professional reviewer networks exist. Government electronic filing channels exist. The missing piece is the integration layer that connects them inside a banking product.
What This Means for Neobank Product Teams
For neobank product teams considering their roadmap, the question is not whether freelancers want tax features. The evidence that they do is overwhelming. The question is how far along the hierarchy to go.
The minimum viable step is better categorisation that maps to tax categories. This is a data labelling improvement that requires no external partnerships and can be delivered with existing engineering resources.
The next step is real-time tax estimation and provisioning. This requires building or licensing a tax rules engine for each jurisdiction, which is a meaningful but bounded engineering effort.
The final step is embedded filing with professional review. This requires either building a network of licensed professionals and government filing integrations in-house, or connecting to an API that provides this infrastructure. Given the licensing, multi-jurisdiction, and liability complexities involved, the API approach is how most neobanks will get there.
The neobanks that reach this final step first will have a product that is meaningfully differentiated from every competitor that stops at invoicing and expense tracking. They will own the complete financial lifecycle of their freelancer users, from first invoice to filed return. And they will capture revenue from a compliance event that their users cannot avoid.
The Competitive Dynamic
This is not a theoretical future. The competitive dynamic is already emerging.
Several European neobanks have publicly discussed plans to expand their tax and accounting features. Some have hired product managers with accounting domain expertise. Others have begun partnering with accounting software providers to deepen their integrations.
The window for differentiation is open now but will not remain open indefinitely. As more platforms add tax-adjacent features, the bar for what constitutes a competitive freelancer banking product will rise. The neobanks that move first will set the standard. The ones that follow will be perceived as catching up.
For freelancers, the choice will eventually be simple. Use the banking app that handles everything, including taxes. Or use the banking app that handles everything except the most stressful, most expensive, and most time-consuming financial obligation they face. The outcome of that choice is predictable.
Michael Cutajar, CPA — Founder of Accora.