Privacy Policy

Last updated on December 18, 2024

YOUR PRIVACY IS A PRIORITY TO US

At TaxSlayer, we are committed to safeguarding customer information collected through the IRS Free File Program delivered by TaxSlayer website (freefile.taxslayer.com)(“Platform”). This Privacy Policy is provided for website visitors and users of our products and services (“you”). As a financial services and technology company, TaxSlayer LLC (“TaxSlayer”, “we”, and “us”) provides these guidelines to explain what information we may gather about you and how we may share it. This Privacy Policy explains TaxSlayer’s collection, use, retention, and security of information about you. It also describes your choices regarding use, access, and correction of your personal information.

Since your privacy is a priority to us, TaxSlayer will not share nonpublic information about you with third parties outside of the TaxSlayer corporate family without your consent, except as explained in our Privacy Policy.

SCOPE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY

As a U.S. based company offering products related to the preparation of U.S. federal and state tax returns, TaxSlayer does not market to nor target subjects of other countries including those in the European Economic Area. In addition, as a provider of tax preparation software, TaxSlayer may be considered an exempt financial institution (or some of the data that TaxSlayer collects may be exempt) under certain U.S. state privacy laws. While the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and various data privacy laws do not apply to TaxSlayer, we strive to meet all rules and regulations relating to data protection and security promulgated by the Internal Revenue Service and its Security Summit ( https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/security-summit  for more information) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act ("GLBA").

As a service to our customers, our Platform may contain links to various tax agencies/services such as IRS.gov. The links provided are maintained by these separate entities and are not the property of, or affiliated with, TaxSlayer in any way. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any website you visit.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We collect information from you directly, the devices that you use to interact with us, and third-party analytics providers.

Information You Give to Us

You may provide the following information to us directly when you enter and use our Platform, contact us for support, or purchase products and services:

  • Contact information, such as name, email address, and phone number.
  • Account information, such as username and password.
  • Payment information, including credit card information (collected by us or our third-party payment processor) is used only to complete your transaction.
  • Information contained in communications to us, including your requests for support or assistance and information necessary to contact you or otherwise fulfill your request. We may ask you to share your screen or chat with us via video conferencing, and we will always ask your permission before recording any of these sessions.
  • Information you provide to us to prepare or file a tax return using our Platform, which information may include your Social Security Number, date of birth, income, employment status, marital status, claimed deductions, credits, and other information necessary to accurately complete your tax return (collectively, “Tax Return Information”).
  • Banking information, such as account and routing numbers, which we use to facilitate refunds.
  • Information that you make available to us via a social media platform, including content that you post on our social media pages and community pages.
  • Information you submit to inquire about or apply for a job with us.
  • Information you provide when you provide customer testimonials or feedback; post comments on our blog or community forums; or participate in our surveys, promotions, marketing events, trade shows, webinars, conferences, training, or product research.
  • Any other information you submit to us.

Information We Collect Automatically

We and partners working on our behalf may use cookies, web beacons, pixels, tags, or other digital technologies on our Site, or portions thereof, that collect information from the device you use to interact with our Platform and services. We also create records when you make purchases or otherwise interact with the Platform or services. The information collected from your device may include:

  • Internet service provider
  • Device identification number, including mobile device ID and IP address
  • Operating system and browser type
  • Geolocation information
  • Analytical information about how you interact with our Platform and services, including how often you use the Platform; access dates and times; your activities on our Platform, including pages viewed and features accessed, mouse clicks, movements, and scrolling activity, events that occur on the Platform; performance information; and referring and exit pages

For more information and to opt out of cookies, see our section on Your Rights and User Controls below.

Children’s information

Our products and services are not intended for or directed to children under the age of 16, nor do we knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 16.

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We may use the information we collect for the following purposes:

  • Tax preparation and related services: Section 301-7216 of the Internal Revenue Code (“Section 7216”) specifically governs the use and disclosure of “Tax Return Information” as that term is used in Section 7216. Tax Return Information may also be considered “Nonpublic Customer Information” protected under the GLBA. Some states may also have additional laws and regulations related to use and disclosure of the same information. We use your Tax Return Information only in accordance with those applicable laws and regulations to prepare and assist in preparing your tax return, to provide services associated with preparing your tax return, to operate our tax preparation business as necessary (e.g., for internal administrative purposes), and to provide you with other products and services you specifically request or consent to, unless otherwise allowed under applicable law.
  • Service functionality: To provide products and services you request, including to process payments, fulfill orders, import data for tax return preparation, verify your identity, recover your account if you forget your password, process forms, and facilitate service communications, as well as to conduct general business operations, such as accounting, recordkeeping, and audits. For example, we use your phone number for SMS verification when you create a new account.
  • Service improvement: As permitted by law, to improve our services and analyze our customer base.
  • Customer support: As permitted by law, to address questions submitted to our customer or technical support systems and to send updates or security alerts, and to analyze and improve our customer support services. Our support team may communicate with you via email, phone, or chat.
  • Personalization: To personalize your online experience, such as by recording your preferences and settings.
  • Security and fraud prevention: To monitor and investigate fraud, identity theft, and other illegal activity; to protect your rights and safety or the rights and safety of others; and to protect and secure our services, Platform, assets, network, and business operations.
  • Legal compliance: To comply with legal process, such as subpoenas, court orders, warrants, and other lawful regulatory or law enforcement requests and to comply with legal requirements.

Unless allowed by applicable law (including Section 7216) and we have your consent, we do not:

  • Sell or rent your personal information for money;
  • Use Tax Return Information to market products or services unrelated to tax preparation; or
  • Share your Tax Return Information or other sensitive personal information with nonaffiliated third parties for their own use or commercial purposes. You can opt out of certain online technologies as described below.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

The privacy and security of your information is important to us. As indicated below, we may share your information to support the products and services you request, or provide your information to third parties, upon your specific consent, for products and services that may benefit you.

We may share your information with the following types of entities:

  • IRS and State Revenue Authorities: We disclose Tax Return Information only in accordance with your requests, such as when filing a tax return with the IRS or state revenue authority, or as allowed by applicable law (including certain permitted disclosures to other tax preparers or providers of auxiliary services).
  • Public Authorities: TaxSlayer may be required to preserve and disclose personal information including Tax Return Information, and any part thereof, without your consent as provided by law, such as, to respond to lawful requests by authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements, a subpoena or court order, judicial process or bankruptcy proceedings, or regulatory authorities to protect against fraud and in compliance with the IRS Security Summit. We may also disclose your personal information when we believe disclosure is necessary to protect your rights and safety, or the rights and safety of others. We may disclose your information to federal, state, or local officials to assist in the investigation or prosecution of a crime. As permitted by law, we may disclose your information to the IRS and Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) to prevent stolen identity refund fraud (SIRF) and as related to potential cyber security threats.
  • Acquiring Businesses: Your information may be disclosed in connection with an actual sale, merger, acquisition, dissolution or transfer of all or a portion of our business or relevant operating unit. We reserve the right to transfer your information as part of the transaction. In such an event, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership, incompatible new uses of your personal information, and choices you may have regarding your personal information.
  • Affiliates: We may share information about you and the products and services you have purchased from us with members of the TaxSlayer corporate family and our parent company of Rhodes Financial Services, LLC, all of whom follow our Privacy Policy.
  • Service Providers: In some cases, your information may be disclosed to our service providers to complete a product purchase, to fulfill a service you request, to provide analytics about our product, to improve our product or services, or to provide other services related to the support, maintenance, and management of our tax return preparation products and services. Our service providers include companies that, for example, use web analytics software or tools, deliver downloadable products, process forms, verify your identity, assist with data import, offer online software applications, facilitate chat support functionality, process payments, or send emails on our behalf. For example, we may share your first name and a pseudonymous identifier with our chat support service provider, so that our support agents can help better serve you when you initiate a chat support session through our Platform. We may share your name, contact information, and other personal information that you provide to our identity verification service provider. In some cases, you may be presented with additional disclosures and consents before we share certain information with our service providers. Not all service providers may be applicable to you. Some service providers are only relevant if you use certain tax forms or otherwise prepare a tax return using our software.
  • Online Analytics Partners: We partner with companies that use cookies and similar tracking technologies to collect information to help us monitor our website usage trends and performance and optimize our delivery of tax return preparation services through the Platform. We may receive, use, or disclose certain information that is not sensitive or financial in nature (and therefore not covered by consent) to measure digital events and interactions. For example, we may collect and use your IP address and/or other device identifiers (i.e., randomly-generated identifiers that cannot be used by any third party to identify you), and the specific webpages on our Platform that you may visit, in order to track the date/time of Platform activity, general region of Platform users, and usage of various Platform features and functionality. Our online metrics partners typically include Google LLC and , Heap Inc., Medallia Inc. (Decibel), and Episerver, Inc. (Optimizely). For more information on how to opt out of sharing cookies and similar technologies, see the Your Rights and User Controls section below.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

TaxSlayer understands the importance of protecting customer information and we have implemented reasonable administrative, technical, and physical security measures designed to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. This includes a designated information security team, written information security policies and procedures, incident detection and response measures, network firewalls, encryption, password protections, and restrictions on which personnel can access any customer personal information. For example, TaxSlayer employees are only allowed to access customer information necessary to perform their job functions and only for the purposes for which it was collected.

With respect to your Tax Return Information, TaxSlayer meets all rules and regulations relating to data protection and security for the tax industry promulgated by the Internal Revenue Service and its Security Summit ( https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/security-summit for more information).

TaxSlayer’s web-based and mobile applications secure information by utilizing a variety of security-related technologies to comply with regulatory standards and our internal information security policies.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

We may use artificial intelligence (“AI”) and related tools to optimize and deliver our products and services to you. For example, we may use AI to analyze how our Platform is used and to enhance and develop support to you. We will provide additional disclosures as required by law.  

DATA RETENTION

We retain your Tax Return Information for at least three tax years to comply with our legal obligations, or as needed to provide you services. Other information may be retained for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you services, contact us at support@taxslayer.com .

YOUR RIGHTS AND USER CONTROLS

You have control over your personal data and how it’s collected, used, and shared. You have the right to access any information held by TaxSlayer that you either input directly or information collected as described above, subject to our data retention policy above.

Request a copy of your information

Upon request, TaxSlayer will provide you with certain personal information you specifically request by contacting customer support at support@taxslayer.com or via a request sent to our address provided below. Your information will be provided in a machine-readable format.

Change or correct personal information

You may view, manage, and/or make changes to your personal information by visiting your account online at freefile.taxslayer.com and selecting “Edit Account Information” in the My Account dashboard; by emailing our customer support; or via mail as set forth in the Contact Us section below.

Delete your personal information

To the extent provided by a state privacy law applicable to you, you have the right to ask us to delete your Personal Information. To request deletion of your Personal Information, please send us a verifiable request to TaxSlayer LLC, 945 Broad Street, Augusta, Georgia 30901 or by email at support@taxslayer.com.

This right of deletion applies to Personal Information that is covered by the applicable state privacy law, subject to any legal exceptions. We may retain certain information that is (1) protected as financial information under federal law, (2) required for the security, integrity, or another internal purpose of the business, or (3) required by the IRS to be maintained in our systems. For example, if your return was e-filed, we retain your tax return information for at least three tax years to comply with our legal obligations.

Please keep in mind that if you have filed a return and ask us to close your account, you will not be able to access previously filed returns. Be sure to download or print a copy of any  accepted returns immediately, as we will not be able to recover this information once the account is closed.

Opt out of Cookies

We (or our vendors) may use cookies, pixels, web beacons, and similar technologies (collectively “Cookies”), to collect or receive information when you interact with our Platform, in order to deliver and improve our products and services to you, and to support and manage our tax return preparation software business. A Cookie may be sent to a browser by a website you visit to help that website remember, often through a unique identifier, information about your visit.

Additionally, we provide the following information about the vendors that use Cookies on our Platform. Our vendors may help us with a variety of functions including analytics, customer engagement, and tag management. In some jurisdictions such as California, the term “Service Provider” may have a distinct meaning. The list provided below includes all vendors (including those that California may consider “Service Providers” and “Third Parties”).

We endeavor to keep this list current, but since business structures and relationships may change, the information below may not always be comprehensive or up to date. For an updated list of our vendors, please contact us at support@taxslayer.com.

Please refer to the vendor’s privacy policy for more information about their Cookies and your choices about each vendor’s Cookies.

Required Cookies: These Cookies are required to allow the technical operation of our Services. We use these cookies to authenticate you, run your session securely while you’re logged in, help detect and prevent fraud, and provide you with our Services. This category also includes Cookies that are used to help remember your site preferences and choices so that we can deliver Services, monitor our Services, and offer you enhanced functionality when using our Services.

    • Cloudflare: We use Cloudflare to provide website security, privacy, and speed of performance. To read Cloudflare’s privacy policy, click  here.
    • Five9: We use Five9 to provide chat support to you. To read Five9’s privacy policy, click here.
    • Optimizely: : We use Optimizely to facilitate website analytics and optimization, including to test variations on our website. To read Optimizely’s privacy policy, click here
    • Tag Inspector: We use Tag Inspector to monitor and scan for tags to ensure that your information is protected. To read Tag Inspector's privacy policy, click  here.

    Analytics cookies: Analytics Cookies are generally placed on our website by our service providers and are used to help us understand how you access our Platform so we can make improvements to your tax return preparation experience.

    • Carry Technologies (Hightouch): To read Hightouch's privacy policy, click here. To read about Hightouch's cookie policy, click here.
    • Content Square: We use Content Square to provide website user analytics. To read Content Square's privacy policy, click here.
    • Google (Google Analytics): We use Google Analytics to provide analytics for website performance and Google Marketing campaigns. To read Google's privacy policy, click here. To opt out of Google Analytics, click here.
    • Heap: We use Heap to provide website user analytics. To read Heap’s privacy policy, click here.
    • Medallia: We use Medallia to provide website user analytics. To read Medallia's privacy policy, click here.

    We may share some information about your website experience that is not sensitive or financial in nature with third parties that operate cookies on our site. We do not share sensitive personal information (including financial information you provide to prepare your tax return) with any business except service providers that provide a service related to our tax preparation software business. These service providers are contractually obligated to use that information only for the purpose of providing services to TaxSlayer and to protect such information from disclosure to other parties. Under the GLBA, you may not opt out of sharing with our service providers.

    You can also set your Internet browser (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Edge, Internet Explorer, etc.) to warn you each time a cookie is being sent or to turn off all cookies (except Flash cookies). Check your browser’s Help menu to find out how. You may also use third-party tools to identify and make additional choices about many technologies, including cookies. Note that if you use a different browser, or use a new or different device, you may need to renew your cookie preferences.

    Additionally, most mobile devices allow you to manage how other technologies, such as unique identifiers are set and used. For example, the Advertising ID on Android devices or Apple’s Advertising Identifier can be managed in your device’s settings. Please reference your mobile operating system support documentation to learn more.

    The following websites provide more information about your choices to opt-out of tracking through certain third-party advertising and analytics Cookies:

    • Digital Advertising Alliance: DAA’s opt-out page provides information on companies that participate in its WebChoices tool and how to opt out using its browser tool.
    • Network Advertising Initiative: NAI’s opt-out page provides information on its member companies that deliver tailored online ads and your choices to opt-out of receiving them.

    Opt out of email communications

    To unsubscribe from receiving general marketing messages from us, please go to our unsubscribe page .

    Do Not Track signals

    TaxSlayer takes privacy and security seriously and we strive to provide various options regarding how your information is collected, used, and shared, as further described above. With regard to “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) signals, we currently do not respond to DNT signals in browsers.

    CONTACT US

    If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you may contact customer support at support@taxslayer.com .

    You can also write us at:

    TaxSlayer.com Privacy
    945 Broad St
    Augusta, GA 30901

    Any claim, controversy, or dispute arising out of or in connection with this Privacy Policy shall be subject to the informal resolution and arbitration provisions in our Terms of Service . If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that you feel has not been addressed satisfactorily, you may also contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request .

    YOUR STATE PRIVACY RIGHTS

    TaxSlayer is committed to complying with all applicable state privacy laws. As a provider of tax preparation software, TaxSlayer may be considered an exempt financial institution (or some of the data that TaxSlayer collects may be exempt) under certain U.S. state privacy laws. In addition, TaxSlayer may not necessarily meet all threshold requirements under state privacy laws. We will update this section as needed.

    For example, California law provides California residents with additional rights regarding our collection and use of your personal information. To learn more about your California privacy rights, visit the Privacy Notice for California and Other States.

    If you make a privacy request under state privacy laws, we will respond as required by applicable law or otherwise in our discretion.

    PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES

    This Privacy Policy may be revised in our sole discretion from time to time as we add new features and services, as laws change, and as industry privacy and security best practices evolve. When we revise the Privacy Policy, we will post it on this page and change the date located at the top of the Privacy Policy page. We encourage you to return to this page periodically to check for any updates or changes. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy regarding use or disclosure of personal information, we will provide advance notice on our Platform. Small changes, or changes that do not significantly affect individual privacy interest, may be made at any time, and without prior notice.

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