Claro

URL FOR VIDEO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aCwJqqsF0dp8-wmIMyd848U7fzlPBlRp/view?usp=sharing

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

When moving countries, knowing what you don't know is difficult to determine. Beyond confusion and anxiety, there are real financial costs tied to the lack of information and transparency. 89% of expats find cross-border tax filing difficult — yet only 9% have ever sought professional financial advice. The result is a costly gap: HMRC estimated £0.3B in under-declared foreign income tax in a single year alone, which doesn't account for missed reliefs, avoidable penalties, or the cost of reactive professional advice. In Canada, TFSA non-resident contributions incur 1% monthly penalties compounding indefinitely, and US expats face FBAR penalties of up to $100,000 per violation. With over 75,000 worker visas issued in the UK per year and a migrant population of 3.7 million in London alone, it's clear there is a significant and underserved need for accessible financial information for people moving countries. Expats navigate pension freezes, investment account restrictions, double taxation, and residency triggers without a single place that explains what it all means for them specifically.

Idea Explanation

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

Claro is a financial literacy tool for people moving countries – a unified resource that explains which questions to ask before it's too late. It demystifies the financial and tax implications of moving countries to educate expats on the need-to-knows before, during, and after a move. Named after the Spanish word for "clear," Claro reduces informational asymmetry by removing financial jargon and providing a more informed perspective about the moving journey.

Users have the ability to input key information about their move: the country they're moving from, the country they're moving to, the investments accounts they hold, when they're moving, and the visa (if applicable) they're moving on. Claro aggregates data from tax authorities and expat tax advisory research to do two things: 1) give users a clear understanding of what they should look out for when moving, and 2) resources that they can connect to to gain more expert knowledge. Importantly, Claro is not an advisor, but rather an educational tool that provides users with the aggregated resources to make informed decisions about their money when they move.

Implementation

How do all the pieces fit together? Does your frontend make requests to your backend? Where does your database fit in?

There are three parts - frontend, backend and data. Frontend uses HTML, CSS and JS. For backend we used Python with Flask and data is saved in JSON format instead of using database for simplicity. The data is saved in two JSON files, one for tax information and second file - scebrios.json - is for cross-border scenarios.

Functionality

The Claro tool allows user to pick an account they are holding (ISA, Roth IRA or ASK), the country they are in, the country they are moving in, how much they have invested and for how long they are planning to hold it. The tool then shows what happens with your money when you move - how much of your gain gets taxed, if it gets taxed and additional information that might affect overall tax (like ISA stops being tax-free abroad, or Denmark taxes on unrealised gain).

Challenges

One of the main challenges in building Claro was defining the boundary between legal education and legal advice, since the platform uses trusted sources to compile and deliver reliable legal information to users. Accessibility was also another notable challenge as one of Claro's objectives is to bridge the gap between its end-users and competent financial literacy.