The challenge
Every US operator of a heavy highway vehicle over 55,000 lbs must file IRS Form 2290 each year and carry a stamped Schedule 1 to register their trucks. The season peaks every July.
Filing directly with the IRS or through legacy providers means confusing tax rules — weight categories, suspended vehicles, mileage limits, first-used months — manual PDF paperwork, slow acknowledgements, and no easy path to fix a wrong VIN or claim a refund.
The goal was a consumer-grade product that turns that annual chore into a guided few-minute flow, and that a small team can run profitably at seasonal scale.
What we built
- Guided filing wizard. Tax period and multi-company support, every IRS weight category from A to V, suspended vehicles, automatic tax calculation, and a clear card-based choice of filing type.
- Direct IRS e-filing. Returns filed electronically through IRS MeF (A2A) with certificate-based security. Acknowledgements are fetched automatically and the stamped Schedule 1 is emailed to the customer.
- Payments built in. On-site card payments through Stripe, plus every IRS tax-payment option — direct debit, EFTPS and card.
- Amendments and free VIN fixes. Weight increases, mileage exceedance and suspension changes, plus free VIN corrections, plain-English rejection reasons and free resubmission.
- Pre-filing automation. Customers pre-file for the next season; queued returns process themselves the moment the IRS opens, with no manual work on opening day.
- Admin back office. Users, payouts, referral balances, Excel exports and business analytics across any date range.
Why it matters to the business
Form 2290 renews every year, so each retained customer is annual repeat business — and pre-filing locks those renewals in early. End-to-end automation from filing through IRS acknowledgement to the finished document lets a small team serve a national customer base through the July peak.
Free VIN correction and resubmission remove the two most common reasons a customer would otherwise pay twice or leave. Guided tax rules and address validation cut the rejections that drive support load exactly when volume is highest. The same rails — accounts, payments, IRS connectivity, admin — now carry adjacent compliance products the brand cross-sells.
How it was delivered
Iteratively, on a live product: 278 small releases across roughly sixteen months, hardened through two July peak seasons, with certificate-based IRS connectivity and browser-verified UI flows.