Privacy Policy

Last updated February 8, 2024

This privacy notice for The Tax Strategist ("we," "us," or "our"), describes how and why we

might collect, store, use, and/or share ("process") your information when you use our services ("Services"), such as when you:

• Visit our website at tts.tax, or any website of ours that links to this privacy notice
• Engage with us in other related ways, including any sales, marketing, or events

Questions or concerns? Reading this privacy notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services.

This summary provides key points from our privacy notice, but you can find out more details about any of these topics by clicking the link following each key point below to find the section you are looking for.

What personal information do we process? When you visit, use, or navigate our Services, we may process personal information depending on how you interact with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. Learn more about the personal information you disclose to us.

Do we text new or existing clients? We only text existing clients provided we have a signed Consent to Receive SMS Communication. Learn more about who and why we text.

Do we process any sensitive personal information? We may process sensitive personal information when necessary with your consent or as otherwise permitted by applicable law. Learn more about the sensitive information we process.

Do we receive any information from third parties? We receive information from tax authorities when authorized by our clients with a signed Power of Attorney.

How do we process your information? We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent. We process your information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so. Learn more about how we process your information.

In what situations and with which parties do we share personal information? We may share information in specific situations and with specific third parties. Learn more about when and with whom we share your personal information.

How do we keep your information safe? We have organizational and technical processes and procedures in place to protect your personal information. However, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Learn more about how we keep your information safe.

What are your rights? Depending on where you are located geographically, the applicable privacy law may mean you have certain rights regarding your personal information. Learn more about your privacy rights.

How do you exercise your rights? The easiest way to exercise your rights is by submitting a data subject access request or by contacting us. We will consider and act upon any request under applicable data protection laws. Want to learn more about what we do with any information we collect? Review the privacy notice in full.

In Short: We collect personal information that you provide to us.

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you register on the Services, express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and Services when you participate in activities on the Services, or otherwise when you contact us.

Personal Information Provided by You. The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. The personal information we collect may include the following:

• Names
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Debit or credit card numbers

Sensitive Information. When necessary, with your consent or as otherwise permitted by applicable law, we process the following categories of sensitive information:

• Payment Data. We may collect data necessary to process your payment if you make purchases, such as your payment instrument number, and the security code associated with your payment instrument. All payment data is stored by Stripe. You may find their privacy notice at stripe.com/privacy.
• Identifiers. We collect identity information necessary to provide Services, such as legal names; postal addresses; phone numbers; email addresses; and unique personal identifiers, such as Social Security numbers.
• Protected classification characteristics under state or federal law. We collect this information as necessary to provide Services, including assigned sexes and dates of birth.
• Commercial information. We collect this information as necessary to provide Services, including transaction information; purchase history; financial details; and payment data as described above.
• Account activity. We collect this information in the process of providing Services, including interactions with our websites, applications, and other systems.
• Audio and visual information. We record and store audio and video calls in connection with our business activities.
• Professional and employment information. We collect this information in the process of providing Services, including business contact details; job titles; and work history.
• Education information. We collect this information in the process of providing Services, including student records and directory information.

All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information.

In Short: Some information — such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address and/or browser and device characteristics — is collected automatically when you visit our Services.

We automatically collect certain information when you visit, use, or navigate the Services. This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information) but may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, information about how and when you use our Services, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Services and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

Like many businesses, we also collect information through cookies and similar technologies. The information we collect includes:

• Log and Usage Data. Log and usage data is service-related, diagnostic, usage, and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use our Services and which we record in log files. Depending on how you interact with us, this log data may include your IP address, device information, browser type, and settings and information about your activity in the Services (such as the date- and timestamps associated with your usage, pages and files viewed, searches, and other actions you take such as which features you use).

In Short: We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and comply with the law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent.

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our Services, including:

• To facilitate account creation and authentication and otherwise manage user accounts. We may process your information so you can create and log in to your account, as well as keep your account in working order.
• To deliver and facilitate the delivery of services to the user. We may process your information to provide you with the requested service.
• To identify usage trends. We may process information about how you use our Services to better understand how they are being used so we can improve them.

In Short: We don't text potential clients and we only text existing clients when we have permission.

We collect phone numbers for potential clients during the appointment creation process. These numbers are only used to call these individuals when video calls are unavailable for the appointment.

We also collect phone numbers in the process of providing Services and will only message existing clients using SMS, or "texts", provided we first have a signed Consent to Receive SMS Communications. We do not disclose personal information over SMS. Examples of when we may text existing clients are:

• When a document is pending signature or approval in the client's account.
• To request one-time authentication codes.

Existing clients may opt out of SMS communication at any time by sending their request in writing.

In Short: We may share information in specific situations described in this section and/or with the following third parties.

We may need to share your personal information in the following situations:

• Business Transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.
• Business Partners. We may share your information with our business partners to offer you certain services.

In Short: We may use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect and store your information.

We may use cookies and similar tracking technologies (like web beacons and pixels) to access or store information. Specific information about how we use such technologies and how you can refuse certain cookies is set out in our Cookie Notice.

In Short: We keep your information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy notice unless otherwise required by law.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us to keep your personal information for longer than the period in which users have an account with us.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

In Short: We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organizational and technical security measures.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Services is at your own risk. You should only access the Services within a secure environment.

In Short: We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18 years of age.

We do not knowingly solicit data from anyone under 18 years of age. By using the Services, you represent that you are at least 18. If we learn that personal information from anyone less than 18 years of age has been collected outside the course of our legal and ethical responsibility when preparing a tax return for a dependent, we will take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data we may have collected from children under the age of 18, please contact us directly.

In Short: You may review, change, or terminate your account at any time.

Withdrawing your consent: If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent depending on the applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us directly.

Please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal nor when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

If you would at any time like to review or change the information in your account or terminate your account, please contact us directly.

Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, we may retain some information in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our legal terms and/or comply with applicable legal requirements.

Cookies and similar technologies: Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can generally choose to set your browser to remove cookies or reject cookies. If you choose to remove cookies or reject cookies, this could affect certain features or services of our Services.

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track ("DNT") feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalized. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.

In Short: If you are a resident of the United States, you are granted specific rights regarding access to your personal information.

What categories of personal information do we collect?

We collect personal information as described in the section above titled "Disclosed Personal Information". We may also collect other personal information outside of these categories through instances where you interact with us in person, online, or by phone or mail in the context of:

• Receiving help through our customer support channels;
• Participation in customer surveys or contests; and
• Facilitation in the delivery of our Services and to respond to your inquiries.

Learn about how we use your personal information in the section above titled "Information Processing".

We may disclose your personal information with our service providers according to a written contract between us and each service provider. Learn more about how we disclose personal information in the section above titled "Information Sharing".

We may use your personal information for our business purposes, such as for undertaking internal research for technological development and demonstration. This is not considered to be the "sale" of your personal information.

We do not and will not sell any personal information to third parties.

Based on the applicable laws of your country, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we collect from you, change that information, or delete it. To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please contact us directly.