The timing, you have to admit, is almost too perfect.
Just as Australia's 1.1 million independent contractors face their first tax season under full platform income reporting—the kind where the Australian Taxation Office already knows what you earned before you file—a bootstrapped California accountant has launched a fintech app betting that the anxiety this creates is worth A$120 a year to make go away.
Eazy-C went live in Australia this year with a pitch that's hardly subtle: the Sharing Economy Reporting Regime, which expanded to all platform categories last July, means the ATO now receives biannual reports of your gross platform earnings. If you haven't been tracking your deductions—those 88-cent-per-kilometre vehicle expenses, the proportionate phone bills, the home office setup—your net income calculation could look, well, optimistic when the regulator comes knocking.
Eric Van Lent, whose California CPA license stays current through December 31, 2026, has spent two years building what amounts to an automated bookkeeper for sole traders. The app connects to bank accounts, flags potential business expenses using AI, and spits out organized records that users can hand to a tax agent or use themselves. It's not tax prep. It's not advice. It's record-keeping with a regulatory nudge behind it.
Whether that nudge is enough to build a business in a market crowded with competitors—some free, some more comprehensive—is the question Van Lent is now trying to answer.
The compliance gap that wasn't there before
Here's what changed. The ATO rolled out SERR in stages, starting with ride-share and short-stay rentals in mid-2023. By July 2024, KPMG noted, the net widened considerably. Platforms now report transactions twice a year. The first full six-month window ran from July through December 2024, and users of services like Camplify and Hopoti have been receiving notifications ever since: your income data is flowing to Canberra whether you're ready or not.
For contractors used to controlling their own disclosure, this represents something of a psychological shift. The baseline is set. The ATO has your gross earnings. What you claim as deductions—and whether you can substantiate those claims with records kept for five years, per standing rules—determines whether your return makes sense or raises flags.
Eazy-C's marketing leans hard into this dynamic. The example the company likes to cite: drive 15,000 kilometres for work, and you're looking at A$13,200 in potential deductions at current rates. Miss that, and you've effectively donated thousands to the tax office.
The ATO, for its part, already offers myDeductions, a free tool within its own app that lets users photograph receipts and log trips. Updated guidance from June confirms that scanned copies are fine, and the tool prefills MyTax come lodgment season. So Eazy-C isn't solving a problem the government pretends doesn't exist. It's automating a solution the ATO has validated but left manual.
Van Lent is betting that automation—specifically, AI-powered transaction scanning—is worth paying for. Maybe it is, if you're juggling Uber Eats runs between other gigs and the last thing you want is to recreate six months of spending with a shoebox of faded receipts.
What you get for A$12 a month
Eazy-C operates as a financial organization tool. That's a careful description, legally speaking. The app uses read-only access to scan bank transactions, then flags items that might qualify as business expenses. Users confirm or reject each suggestion. Over time, you build a contemporaneous log instead of scrambling in June to remember whether that January fuel purchase was work or personal.
The output is designed to plug into existing workflows. For the 58% of Australians who used a registered tax agent to file in 2023-24, Eazy-C hands over an organized, substantiated record. For the do-it-yourself crowd, there's a Schedule C equivalent ready to go. The app is available in both Australia and the United States as of 2026, though the Australian launch has been explicitly tied to SERR compliance.
Pricing: A$11.99 monthly or A$119.90 annually, GST included. Early adopters get three months free. A 14-day trial is live at launch. The company registered for GST (ARN 3000 4091 2227) and processes payments through Stripe. The Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, both effective March 25, make the limitations clear: AI outputs may be wrong, the service isn't tax or legal advice, and you're responsible for what you file. Standard startup liability hedging, but worth noting.
A crowded field, and Eazy-C isn't the most ambitious player
Van Lent's company is hardly alone. Hnry charges 1% plus GST on income and bundles expense review, invoicing, and lodgment by registered agents. TaxLeopard markets itself as accounting-plus-tax-app with GST automation and BAS lodgment built in. TaxFox emphasizes mileage logbooks. TaxTank starts at A$6 monthly. Rounded handles invoicing and accounting for freelancers. Everlance, which updated its Australia help docs as recently as January, focuses on mileage and expenses. MyGigsters, fresh off a A$1.1 million seed round in January 2025, is building embedded financial services for the same demographic.
What separates the pack is scope and registration. Several competitors—Hnry and TaxLeopard included—operate as registered tax agents and can file returns on users' behalf. Eazy-C does not. Its Terms explicitly state it's not a tax agent, not a tax prep service, not offering advice. The product is narrower: substantiation and organization, not advice or lodgment.
This may reflect strategic choice or founder bandwidth. Van Lent holds CPA license number 145211 in California, verified current through the state board as of early April. But Eazy-C is registered in Wyoming as DULU-C LLC, doing business under the Eazy-C name, with a Casper address. The website describes the operation as bootstrapped with no venture involvement. No funding rounds disclosed, no cap table to speak of.
It's a modest footprint for a market that's seen larger bets.
The gig economy is shifting, and fast
The Australian platform economy is in the middle of significant change. RSM reported in December that Uber Eats and DoorDash riders would see roughly 25% pay bumps starting in March, part of broader labor reforms reshaping how platform work is compensated. Against that backdrop, Eazy-C launched its Australian presence with press releases on March 31 and April 1, framing the product as a fix for the "substantiation gap" SERR created.
That 1.1 million independent contractor figure comes from Australian Bureau of Statistics data released in August 2024, representing 7.5% of employed Australians at the time. The number may have shifted since, but it's the benchmark the company is working from.
The US side of the business, announced via PRLog on March 25, emphasizes a different pain point: gross-versus-net reporting confusion under 1099-K rules, where platform workers risk being taxed on gross receipts instead of net income after fees. That release mentioned a Q3 launch and estimated starter pricing around $4.95 monthly, with pro tiers coming later. The Australian offering appears live now, though an exact launch date beyond "2026" hasn't been pinned down in available materials.
The real question: will stress sell subscriptions?
For fintech watchers, Eazy-C represents a bet on compliance-driven demand. The regulatory infrastructure—SERR reporting, ATO scrutiny of expense claims, practitioner commentary on substantiation requirements—has matured faster than user behavior. Contractors know they should track expenses in real time. Most don't.
Whether 1.1 million of them will pay A$120 annually for automated record-keeping when free tools exist is the gamble. The product's value may only become apparent under duress: during an ATO query, or when a tax agent quotes hourly rates to reconstruct twelve months of expenses from memory and bank statements.
Van Lent is banking on that moment of panic being common enough, and painful enough, to drive adoption. The first SERR-matched tax season is underway. By the time next year's filings roll around, we'll know whether the compliance gap he's targeting is as wide—and as lucrative—as he thinks it is.
For now, it's a California CPA with a Wyoming LLC and an Australian tax angle, trying to turn regulatory anxiety into recurring revenue. The gig economy has produced stranger business models. Whether this one scales depends less on the app's features than on how many contractors discover, too late, that they should have been paying attention all along.
