This Privacy Policy is prepared to help you understand how TaxPorter, LLC (“TaxPorter,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, and shares your personal information and to help you understand and exercise your privacy rights. Kindly read the following terms to learn more about your privacy, as this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) will help you understand how we collect and use personal information from those who access and make use of our website and the services that we offer. By accessing or using the website in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Policy, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use, and share your information in the following ways.
1. Changes to this Policy
We reserve the right to make changes to this Policy at any given time. If you want to make sure that you are up to date with the latest changes, we advise you to visit this page frequently.
2. What does this Policy cover?
This Policy applies to TaxPorter, and it governs any and all data collection and usage by us in compliance with applicable regulations. Through the use of these Services, you are consenting to the data collection procedures expressed in this Policy. We gather various types of information from our users, as explained in more detail below, and we use this information internally in connection with our Website, including to personalize, provide, and improve our Website and services, to allow you to upload certain documents, make payments and to communicate with you, and to analyze how you use the Website and the services that we offer. In certain cases, we may also share some information with third parties, but only as described below. Please note that this Policy does not govern the collection and use of information by companies that TaxPorter does not control nor by individuals not employed or managed by us. If you visit a website made available via the website or link, review its privacy policy before providing the website with information.
3. Information we collect
When you make use of our website, we may collect and process certain personal information about you, which may include the following as described below:
A. Information you provide:
Personal data: When you use our Website and the services that we offer, TaxPorter collects certain personal information about you such as your name, email address, phone number, and demographic data. We collect and use this data as necessary for TaxPorter business operations, such as creating and managing user accounts, providing customer support, improving Website functionality, sending registration confirmations and tax document receipt notices, and for internal analytics purposes.
User tax documents and data: Because the primary function of TaxPorter is to enable the secure transfer of your tax documents and personal information to your designated tax expert, you will be required to provide certain information related to your taxes. The tax documents, tax forms, personal identification data, social security number, income data, and any other information you upload for purposes of having your tax return completed will be transferred directly to your specified tax expert. We will not access or retain user tax documents or data except on a temporary basis needed to enable the transmission or our business operation.
Payment data: Through the use of third-party payment processors, data necessary to process your payment, such as your payment instrument number (such as a credit card number) and the security code associated with your payment instrument, may be collected. All payment data is stored by our payment processor, and you should review its terms and conditions and privacy policies.
B. Automated information collection We may collect certain information (which does not identify you as an individual) about your use of the website through the use of tracking technologies or by other passive means and other relevant statistics, including the following:
i. Cookies: When you access and/or make use of our website, we send one or more cookies (small text files containing a string of characters) to your device that uniquely identifies your browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of the website and service by storing user preferences and tracking user trends. A pop-up requesting your consent may be displayed to you before Cookies are placed on your browser or device. By consenting to the placement of Cookies on your device, you enable us to offer you the best possible experience when you make use of our website. You may refuse permission to the placement of Cookies if you so desire; however, certain aspects of Our website may not work properly or as intended. You can also adjust cookie settings in your browser, including blocking or deleting cookies. Settings vary by browser, so check your browser’s help function to learn more. The type of cookies we use can generally be categorized under one of the four categories below.
ii. Links: The contents on the website may include links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether IP addresses have followed these links. We use this information to improve the quality of our products and design.
iii. Beacons: Beacons (also known as “pixel tags” or “clear GIFs”) are 1×1 single-pixel graphics that allow us to count the number of users who have visited or accessed the website and to recognize users by accessing our cookies. We may employ beacons to facilitate website administration and navigation, track the actions of website users, compile aggregated statistics about website usage and response rates, and provide an enhanced online experience for visitors to the website.
iv. Analytics services: We may use third-party analytics services (“Analytics Services”), such as Google Analytics, to help analyze how users use our website. The information generated by the cookies or other technologies about your use of the TaxPorter website (the “Analytics Information”) may be transmitted to the Analytics Services. The Analytics Services use Analytics Information to compile reports on user activity. The Analytics Services may also transfer the Analytics Information to third parties where required to do so by law or where such third parties process Analytics Information on their behalf. Each Analytics Service’s ability to use and share Analytics Information is restricted by such Analytics Service’s terms of use and privacy policy.
4. What do we use your personal information for?
We use the information collected from you to provide, improve, and develop the Website and the services we provide to you, communicate with you, offer you a better service, and protect our users and us. When you interact with or use our website, we use various technologies to collect information about you for various reasons, as described below:
i. Create and manage user account: We use your information to create and service your user account on the Website and to enable certain functionalities for your use on the Website. We also use your information to validate your identity, identify you as a user on the Website, and ensure the security of your account -e.g., by sending an email OTP to confirm that you are the owner of the email address linked to your user account.
ii. Enhancing Website and service functionality and development: We use some of the information we gather from you to understand, diagnose, troubleshoot, and fix issues with our website and services. We also use such information to operate, evaluate, develop, manage, and improve our website (including operating, administering, analyzing, and improving our products and services; developing new products and services; managing and evaluating the effectiveness of our communications; performing accounting, auditing, billing reconciliation and collection activities and other internal functions.
iii. Customer support, service updates, and communication: We may send emails, product updates, and related emails to the email address you provide to us and for informational and operational purposes, such as customer service and other service-related purposes. We use personal information that we gather from you to communicate with you in relation to your use of our website and services.
iv. Business operations; fraud detection, and prevention: We use some of your information to increase and maintain the safety and security of our website, products, and services and prevent misuse. We use personal information to detect and prevent fraud and abuse to protect the security and ensure the safety of our Customers, TaxPorter, and others.
We also use collected information to protect against, identify, and prevent fraud and other criminal activity, claims, and other liabilities.
v. Advertising and marketing: We utilize Personal Information to contact you for advertising, marketing, and selling TaxPorter services aligned with your communication preferences. Marketing or informational materials such as newsletters are sent in accordance with your communication preferences. We occasionally conduct surveys or focused research that may require voluntary sharing of Personal Information for participation. Such activities usually have additional notices offering more insights about the use of your Personal Information, and your consent may be requested.
vi. Comply with and enforce applicable legal requirements: In certain cases, we collect your personal information to stay in compliance with laws and relevant industry standards and policies, including this Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions.
5. Sharing personal information
Except as described below, we do not sell, rent, trade, or otherwise share personal information collected through the website because we are committed to maintaining your trust:
i. Service providers: With third party service providers working on our behalf who have agreed to conform to our data privacy and security requirements (such as email and marketing, and web hosting services).
ii. With your designated tax preparation expert in order to provide you with the agreed tax services.
iii. Subsidiaries and affiliates: We may share personal information or any information collected through your use of the website with our employees, subsidiaries and affiliates for the purposes for which you provided the information or as reasonably necessary for our internal administrative and business purposes.
iv. AWS data storage: TaxPorter leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) for secure cloud data storage and hosting. All TaxPorter data including sensitive financial information is encrypted prior to uploading to AWS servers. We utilize additional AWS security features such as Web Application Firewall, VPC service controls, Access Control Lists, and advanced threat detection.
v. Analytics Partners: When you provide your personal information to us, we may make certain personal information available to certain third parties for analytics purposes, including but not limited to leveraging third-party tools and services to track, integrate, and manage user’s interests, usage pattern, and/or functionality available through our website. We will only share your personal information with analytics partners for the improvement of our own Website and/or to deliver the TaxPorter services to you. We do not in any way sell your personal information to advertisers.
vi. Merger and acquisition: We may disclose or transfer personal information or any information collected through your usage of our website to third parties who acquire all or a portion of our business, whether such acquisition is by way of merger, consolidation, or purchase of all or a portion of our assets, or in connection with any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding brought by or against us.
vii. Compliance with laws: We may disclose personal information or any information collected through your usage of our website if we are required to do so by law or pursuant to legal process, in response to a request from government officials, law enforcement authorities, or a valid subpoena, or as necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of illegal activity, including without limitation to prevent, investigate, detect or prosecute any criminal offense or attack.
viii. Consent: We may share personal information in accordance with any consent you provide.
ix. Aggregate Information: We share aggregate statistical data for the improvement of our Services. We may also share aggregated or de-identified information with third parties at our discretion.
6. Data retention and deletion
We keep your personal information only as long as necessary to provide you with our services and for legitimate and essential business purposes, such as maintaining the performance of our website, making data-driven business decisions about new features and offerings, complying with our legal obligations, and resolving disputes. We keep some of your personal information for as long as you are a user of our Website and the services that we provide.
If you request, we will delete or anonymize your personal information so that it no longer identifies you unless we are legally allowed or required to maintain certain personal information, including situations such as the following:
i. If there is an unresolved issue relating to your use of the service, such as an outstanding credit or an unresolved claim or dispute, we will retain the necessary personal information until the issue is resolved;
ii. Where we need to retain the personal information for our legal, tax, audit, and accounting obligations, we will retain the necessary personal information for the period required by applicable law and/or,
iii. Where necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud prevention or to maintain the security of our users.
7. Tax expert data use terms
As a tax expert on TaxPorter, you agree to allow TaxPorter to load relevant client tax documents and data provided by the client looking to get their tax done for the purposes of populating client profiles and facilitating tax preparation services through our Website.
Additionally, tax experts agree to use any client documents, personal information, financial details, or other data accessed through the TaxPorter Website solely for its intended purpose of facilitating accurate tax preparation services ordered by the client.
Tax experts shall not utilize client data provided for any secondary purposes, including but not limited to:
i. Marketing, advertising, or promotional communications
ii. Direct outreach to clients outside of TaxPorter Website
iii. Enriching third-party data aggregator records
iv. Sale, rental, or unauthorized distribution to external parties
v. Retaining sensitive data beyond the required tax records schedule
Tax experts affirm responsibility for maintaining complete confidentiality of client information provided through the TaxPorter Website. Reasonable data privacy and security controls must be implemented to prevent unauthorized internal or external access to said data. Any other use of client data or breach of confidentiality may result in the termination of TaxPorter access, and reserves the right to pursue legal actions for violation of these data usage terms, relevant privacy laws, right to information acts, or applicable data protection regulations.
8. Your rights
General Data Protection Regulations grant you certain rights (‘information rights’) which provide you with:
i. Right of rectification or erasure – if you feel that any data that we hold about you is inaccurate, you have the right to ask us to correct or rectify it. You also have a right to ask us to erase information about you where you can demonstrate that the data we hold is no longer needed by us if you withdraw the consent upon which our processing is based or if you feel that we are unlawfully processing your data. Your right of rectification and erasure extends to anyone to whom we have disclosed your personal information, and we will/shall take all reasonable steps to inform those with whom we have shared your data about your request for erasure. Note that we may have a legal obligation to retain some or even all personal information about you under relevant laws. We may also have the legal right to retain the information you have requested to be erased.
ii. Right to restriction of processing – you have a right to request that we refrain from processing your data where you contest its accuracy, or the processing is unlawful and you have opposed its erasure, or where we don’t need to hold your data anymore but you need us to in order to establish, exercise or defend any legal claims, or we are in dispute about the legality of our processing your personal information.
iii. Right to object – you have a right to object to our processing of your personal information where the basis of the processing is our legitimate interests, including but not limited to direct marketing and profiling.
iv. Right to withdraw consent – you have the right to withdraw your consent for processing your personal information where the processing is based on consent. To withdraw consent, please specify what you wish to withdraw consent for by emailing us at admin@taxporter.com.
v. Right of complaint – if you are unhappy with the way we have used or are handling your personal information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority for data protection issues. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the Supervisory Authority. So, please contact us first by emailing us at admin@taxporter.com.
9. Keeping your data safe
We use commercially reasonable technical and organizational measures to help secure and safeguard your data in our possession. However, you understand that no data transmission over the Internet is completely secure, and no security mechanism is impenetrable. Therefore, although we take steps to protect your data, we cannot guarantee the security of the data that we collect from you or the security of our servers or the Website. By accessing the Website, any transmission of data is at your own risk and you agree to assume all risk in connection with data sent to us or collected by us.
10. Additional privacy rights for California residents (CCPA)
If you are a resident of California, Colorado, or another U.S. state that has a privacy law similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act, this section provides additional information about specific rights regarding your personal information. Personal Information we collect The following is a list of personal information that we collect or have collected from California residents over the past twelve months. We will update this disclosure from time to time as appropriate.
● Unique identifiers such as your first name, last name, or similar identifier, address, or IP address;
● Internet or other electronic network activity information, including content interaction information;
● geolocation data, such as the location of your device or computer;
● inference data, such as information about your purchase preferences, feedback, and survey responses;
● Other information that identifies or can be reasonably associated with you (e.g., the information you voluntarily provide as you use the TaxPorter services, such as additional profile information or user-generated content).
How we collect personal information We obtain the categories of personal information listed above from the following sources:
● Directly from our website users when they provide the information to us.
● Indirectly from you as you navigate through the website. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies.
● From third-party service providers. Categories of personal information disclosed for our business purpose The personal information that we disclosed about consumers for a business purpose over the past (12) twelve months falls into the following categories as established by the California Consumer Privacy Act:
● Identifiers such as your name, email address, billing address, or IP address;
● Personal information, such as a credit card number, for example, if we use a third-party payment processor;
● Your age range, gender, or other protected classifications, for example, if you choose to participate in a survey distributed by us or fill out the User Content form;
● Geolocation data from your IP address.
Access request rights You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past twelve (12) months. But only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. Agents must submit proof that the consumer has authorized them to act on their behalf. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request. If you wish to do any of these things, please contact us. Once we receive and verify your request, we will disclose it to you. You may make up to two (2) requests, no more than twice in a twelve-month period, for information as to:
● The categories of personal information we collected about you or shared with our service providers for business purposes.
● The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
● Our business or commercial purpose for collecting that personal information.
● The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you.
Right to deletion of personal information Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to request the deletion of your personal information. If you wish to do this, please contact us. Certain services may be limited or unavailable depending on your data choices and subject to applicable regulations. We may, however, deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers(s) to:
● Complete the purpose for which we collected the personal information, provide a service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
● Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
● Exercise free speech; ensure another consumer’s right to exercise their free speech rights or exercise another right provided for by law.
● Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq. or other legal obligation.
● Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.
No discrimination You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for the exercise of your rights under the CCPA, and we will not discriminate against any consumer for exercising their rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act.
11. Age restriction
Our Website and services are intended for individuals who are at least 18 years old. We do not knowingly collect information from visitors under the age of 13 (or under the age of 16 for individuals in the EEA/UK). If you are a minor who is at least 13 years old (or at least 16 for individuals in the EEA/UK) but under 18 years old, you may use our services under the supervision of a parent or guardian. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected identifiable information from a child under 13 (or under 16 for individuals in the EEA/UK), we will make reasonable efforts to delete the information promptly. If you believe that we have collected identifiable information from a child under 13 (or under 16 for individuals in the EEA/UK), please contact us at admin@taxporter.com.
12. Unsubscribe or opt-out
Marketing emails: If you have subscribed to our email and electronic newsletter communications, you will always have the opportunity to unsubscribe from future communications. You will also have the opportunity to “opt out” of commercial email from the applicable service by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the email you receive or by contacting us directly. We will continue to adhere to this Policy with respect to any personal information previously collected. Interest-based advertising: We may also make use of the information we gather about you to provide you with advertisements and offers that are more relevant to your interest. These advertisements may be based on the information we collect through cookies and other tracking technologies that we use on our website, emails, and through other third-party websites you visit.
13. Links to other sites
Our Website may contain links to third-party websites or services. TaxPorter does not claim nor accept responsibility for any privacy policies, practices and/or procedures of other third-party websites. Therefore, we encourage all users and visitors to be aware when they leave our website and to read the privacy statements of every website that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Policy Agreement applies only and solely to the information collected on our website.
14. Acceptance of Terms
By using this website, you are hereby accepting the terms and conditions stipulated within the Privacy Policy Agreement. If you do not agree with our terms and conditions, you should refrain from further use of our website. In addition, your continued use of our website following the posting of any updates or changes to our Terms shall mean that you agree and accept such changes.
15. How to contact us
Feedback, comments, requests for technical support, and other communications relating to the website and the services should be directed to us at admin@taxporter.com.