Abound
Abound Technical Briefing
Published March 29, 2022
Supported by Modern Treasury , IowaEDA and Brale
Overview
Abound demos the tax-automation APIs behind freelancer banking apps like Lance — built on the thesis of "what if the IRS shipped a REST API." Four core products cover the self-employed tax stack: year-to-date federal/state/self-employment tax calculation, tax payments with 100% federal/state/DC coverage, transaction prediction (personal vs. business, deduction category), and end-of-year form generation (1099, Schedule C). The demo shows how Abound sits on top of Unit BaaS: when a Lance user opens a Unit account, Abound automatically registers them on its tax ledger using Unit\'s KYC data and auto-creates a payment method from the Unit account and routing numbers. Every debit and credit on the Unit ledger flows to Abound, which recalculates taxes in real time — income marked 1099 adds to the marginal/effective rate breakdown; business expenses categorized as commission deduct accordingly; a personal Apple Store purchase is flagged by the prediction engine as non-deductible. Abound returns a "smart tax rate" that Lance uses to set aside taxes from every deposit, and the tax-payment API remits $887 to the IRS on April 15 with a full created → pending → done lifecycle.
0:00 Introduction to Abound — tax automation for freelancers
Abound demos the tax automation layer behind freelancer banking apps like Lance. Where W-2 employees live in net income (taxes, healthcare, 401k withheld automatically), self-employed people live in gross income — Abound handles that tax back office over banking-as-a-service providers like Unit.
1:30 Developer dashboard, Postman, SDKs, recipes
Abound's developer dashboard ships API keys, guides, a full Postman collection, SDKs, and recipes authored by the team. The tone is very "what if the IRS built an API" — four main products cover everything a freelancer bank needs.
2:00 Four Abound products — calculate, pay, predict, file
Tax calculation (year-to-date federal, state, and self-employment tax), tax payment (the only API with 100% coverage of federal, state, and DC estimated tax payments over REST), transaction prediction (personal vs. business split, deduction categories), and form generation (1099s and Schedule C).
3:30 User registration via the Unit integration
When a user opens a Lance account on Unit, Abound automatically registers them on the Abound tax ledger using Unit's KYC data. Fintechs don't re-collect identity data; Abound receives SSN, name, and address directly from Unit's webhooks.
4:30 Real-time tax calculation on every debit/credit
As debits and credits flow across the Unit ledger, Unit forwards them to Abound which recalculates taxes on the fly. A sample $1,500 Lyft cashout or client invoice shows marginal + effective rates, Medicare breakdown, and total taxes including any W-2 side income.
6:30 Expense categorization and transaction prediction
Expenses sent to Abound get a tax_category (e.g. "commission"). The prediction engine flags personal-looking purchases (Apple Store) as non-deductible and reshapes the tax breakdown as deductions accumulate.
7:30 Smart tax rate — how much to set aside per paycheck
Abound returns a "smart tax rate" per user. Lance multiplies each incoming payment by this rate and uses Unit to move funds from the main account to a tax-withholding sub-account — mimicking what ADP/Gusto do for W-2 employees.
8:30 Quarterly remittance via the tax payment API
The tax payment API creates an $887 Q1 IRS payment using the auto-created Unit-Abound payment method. Payments move through created → pending → done; sandbox supports forcing statuses (222 → done, 111 → pending) and surfaces common errors like name/SSN mismatches.
Presented by Alex Cram — Abound · LinkedIn · website
Topics: Insurance, Embedded Finance
