Toronto-based business information services giant Thomson Reuters has acquired tax software provider cPaperless, which operates as SafeSend, for $600 million USD ($864.5 million CAD) in cash.
Founded in 2008 and based in Ann Arbor, Mich., SafeSend aims to eliminate some of the manual work of tax professionals by automating the “last-mile” of the tax return, including assembly, review, taxpayer e-signature, and delivery.
Thomson Reuters expects SafeSend to generate approximately $60 million of revenue in 2025.
SafeSend integrates with various tax preparation tools used by accounting professionals, such as CCH Axcess, Intuit Lacerte, and Thomson Reuters’s own UltraTax CS.
SafeSend claims its solutions are used by 70 percent of the United States’ top 500 accounting firms.
Thomson Reuters provides a variety of business information services such as specialized software and tools for legal, tax, accounting, and compliance professionals, in addition to operating a global news service, Reuters.
Thomson Reuters said that it expects SafeSend to generate approximately $60 million of revenue in 2025, and that it will grow more than 25 percent annually in the next few years.
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Thomson Reuters added it intends to continue to offer SafeSend as a market solution, supporting the ability to interoperate with multiple vendors across a connected tax software ecosystem.
“By integrating SafeSend’s innovative technology with our existing solutions, we’re simplifying tax preparation workflows, and meeting the dynamic demands of businesses we serve to help them thrive in an increasingly complex tax landscape,” Thomson Reuters’s president of tax, audit and accounting professionals, Elizabeth Beastrom, said in a statement.
A Thomson Reuters spokesperson told BetaKit that the company does not expect any immediate changes to SafeSend’s product offerings or product teams, as all of SafeSend’s leaders and 235 employees are staying on as part of the acquisition. Thomson Reuters added that it intends to integrate SafeSend’s software with its own technology and content to “create a reimagined, end-to-end tax automation solution for both tax professionals and their clients.”
The acquisition joins Thomson Reuters’s tax software portfolio, which has been bolstered by a couple of large acquisitions in recent years.
In early 2023, Thomson Reuters closed its $500-million USD acquisition of SurePrep, a California-based tax automation software and services company. This past October, Thomson Reuters acquired New York-based Materia AI, another tax accounting workflow automation platform, for an undisclosed amount. Materia had only emerged from stealth four months earlier, after securing $6.3 million USD from a group of investors that included Thomson Reuters Ventures, according to TechCrunch.
UPDATE (01/03/2025): This story has been updated with additional information and commentary shared by a Thomson Reuters spokesperson.
Feature image courtesy Scott Graham via Unsplash.