SMU graduates Mr Tan Liang Jun, Mr Ng Thiam Hock and Ms Chen Junqi (School of Accountancy, Class of 2011) and Ms Winnie Low (Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Class of 2012), have done SMU proud by emerging champions at the inaugural hackathon organised by Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS).

The team, Wondertax, developed a 3-step web application - Upload, Review, Submit - that helps SMEs to easily transform accounting income to taxable income to tax computation. The system automatically populates tax forms, generate relevant tax adjustments, provide personalised suggestions for tax relief, and answer questions by connecting them to IRAS-certified professionals.

Themed “Creating taxpayer-centered experiences for SMEs, the self-employed and individual taxpayers”, the competition was held over the weekend of 2-4 September 2016, and attracted about 100 participants including students, working adults and entrepreneurs who formed teams to develop their ideas, compete and build new prototypes for creating taxpayer-centred experiences.

The hackathon is part of IRAS’ objective of providing intuitive and convenient digital services and interactions with taxpayers, in line with the Singapore Government’s Smart Nation strategy to adopt a more citizen-centric approach when providing public services.

The teams were judged on the impact of the solution, innovativeness, feasibility and ease of adoption, as well as the quality of the prototype presented

On what prompted the team to participate in this hackthon, Thiam Hock shared, “It was a spur of the moment decision. I saw a Facebook advertisement about the hackathon a week before the event, and managed to convince the others to form a team. As we were already friends and project group mates during our SMU days, we did not have to spend any time building rapport.

“My biggest takeaway from this competition is the power of teamwork and trust. We played different roles, but all four of us were equally important. We were all aligned to the problem we needed to solve and what the solution should be, thereby allowing each of us to focus on our role, and trust each other to play his or her role well.”

On how the team came up with the winning idea, Winnie said “Three of us have experience working in the tax industry. We came up with the idea because we felt it was an application that we would like to have in the course of our work, and also to help small business owners file their taxes in a more efficient manner.”

As to whether the team will be pursuing the idea further, Liang Jun said, “Our priority now is to learn more about IRAS’s grant and what conditions we have to fulfill to qualify for it. Having support from IRAS is critical as we can learn more about the problems faced by SMEs and address them in our applications. In this respect, we would love to engage the help of any SMU alumni who works in an SME to beta test our product and give us feedback to improve it.”

[Caption: SMU alumni (L-R) Ms Chen Junqi, Mr Ng Thiam Hock, Ms Winnie Low and Mr Tan Liang Jun received the first prize of $3500 from Mr Tan Tee How (extreme right), Commissioner of Inland Revenue & Chief Executive Officer, IRAS.]