Privacy policy

Tax App (taxapp.nz) helps New Zealanders track income, expenses, and tax. To do that, we collect and store information on your behalf. This policy explains what we hold, where it is held, and your rights under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.

What we collect

• Account details: your name, your email address and, if you sign in with Google, the basic profile Google shares (name, email address, and account identifier). Passwords are encrypted in your browser before they are sent and are stored only as salted hashes.
• Financial records you enter: income, expenses, rental property and tenancy details, contacts, savings plans, and the bank statement lines you upload for reconciliation.
• Documents you upload: invoices, tenancy agreements, and similar attachments. These are stored privately. To open one in the app, you must be signed in. The app then creates a link that works for a few minutes and then expires.
• Usage analytics: first-party events. In the app, we record which screens are used and timing information. On this marketing site, we record page views and clicks on links into the app, without cookies. We do not use third-party advertising trackers.
• Network address: the IP address your device connects from, recorded when you create an organisation and with usage events, in the app and on this website. We use it to protect accounts against abuse, to check that a new organisation is signing up from New Zealand, and to see roughly which town a sign-up came from. To turn an address into a location, we send it to an IP lookup service (ipwho.is). We send nothing else with it. No name, email address, or financial record ever leaves our systems for this purpose.
• Contact form messages: the name, email address, and message you send us.

Where it is stored

Your records are stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in Auckland, New Zealand, and are encrypted in transit and at rest. Backups run daily, are kept for 7 days, and are also held in New Zealand.

We chose this on purpose. New Zealand's tax rules keep business records here by default. But they also allow records to be stored overseas where Inland Revenue (IRD) has approved it, or through a provider that IRD has already approved. They also allow offshore backups as long as the main records stay in New Zealand. Keeping everything here means that your records meet the rules without relying on any such approval.

The app's server also runs on AWS in Auckland, and the service's own passwords and keys are kept in a secure store there. Two supporting parts of the service run in Sydney, Australia. The first is email, which is sent and received through AWS there, with Resend, a US-based email service, as a backup. The second is the app's own files (the pages and code your browser loads), which are served from there. Neither keeps your records, except email replies, which are kept for up to 30 days. If your organisation turns on address lookup with its own Addressfinder account, what you type into an address field and the address you choose from the list are sent to Addressfinder to look up New Zealand addresses. Addressfinder keeps them in its logs, held in Australia, for up to 14 days. The address you choose is saved with your records in Auckland, together with where it is on the map. A few other services process data without storing it. They are listed below under "Who processes it".

Your documents are not publicly readable. Every time a document is opened, whether in the app or from a report, we create a new short-lived link, not a permanent address.

Reports you share

When you run a PDF report that lists attachments, the attachment links inside it work for 14 days from the time you ran the report, and nobody needs to sign in to use them. This is on purpose. It lets you send a report to your accountant without giving them an account. It also makes sure that a report that is forwarded, or that sits in an old inbox, cannot be used to reach your documents forever.

Links cannot be renewed. Once the 14 days have passed, the links stop working, and the report must be run again in the app by someone who is signed in. Anyone who has the report while its links are live can open the documents it lists, so treat a recent report with the same care as the documents themselves.

AI connectors

You can connect an AI app, such as Claude or ChatGPT, to your Tax App organisations. Nothing is sent to an AI app unless an owner of your organisation has switched AI connectors on and you connect one. When you do, you choose which organisations it can see, and it works under your own login and role, inside the limits the owner has allowed. Tax App then sends it the records it asks for, when you tell it to. From that point, the company behind the AI app handles them under its own terms with you, and it may store them outside New Zealand. Your records in Tax App stay where they are.

We keep a record of each connection: which app it is, the organisations you chose, and when it was last used. An owner can remove a connection at any time in the app, under Settings, then AI connectors. Changing your password ends all of your connections. Either way, the AI app loses access. Anything it has already received stays with that company under its terms. The AI connectors guide explains what an AI app can and cannot do.

Who processes it

We use a small number of service providers, each only for what its role needs. The service providers page sets out when each one is used and what it receives.

• AWS: in Auckland, New Zealand, the app's server, your records and documents, backups, and the service's own passwords and keys; in Sydney, the app's own files.
• Amazon SES, with Resend as a backup: email (invitations, verification, password resets, and the messages and reports you send to your contacts, together with their replies).
• Google: the optional Sign in with Google, reCAPTCHA bot protection on our contact page, and Google Fonts, which supplies the app's typeface to your browser and so sees your IP address.
• ipwho.is: turning an IP address into a rough town or country. It receives the address only.
• Addressfinder: looking up New Zealand addresses as you type into an address field, only for an organisation that has turned on address lookup with its own Addressfinder account. Addressfinder, a New Zealand company, receives from our server, under that account, what you type and the address you choose, and keeps them in its logs, held in Australia, for up to 14 days. It receives nothing else about you, and the address you choose, with where it is on the map, is saved only with your records.
• OpenStreetMap: the small map shown under an address. Your browser loads the map pictures from the OpenStreetMap Foundation, based in the United Kingdom. It sees your IP address and the area of the map shown, but not the address itself or anything else about you. If you choose View on OpenStreetMap, it also receives the exact spot on the map.
• Akahu: bank feeds, if you connect your bank. Akahu, a New Zealand service, passes your bank transactions to the app.
• Xero: if you connect Xero, the records you choose to sync are sent to, and read from, your own Xero organisation.
• Tenancy Services (MBIE): if you connect Tenancy Services with your RealMe login, linking your landlord number sends it that number, with the landlord's and the contact person's names, email addresses, and phone numbers. The app then reads the bonds held under your landlord number (amount, status, bonded address, dates, and tenant names) to check them against your tenancies. It does not lodge, change, or refund a bond.
• AI providers: only for an organisation whose owner has switched on AI and saved its own key for Claude (Anthropic), GPT (OpenAI), or Gemini (Google), all based outside New Zealand. The provider reads invoices, bills, and PDF bank statements, to pre-fill records and to help match bank transactions. It receives the document, with the organisation's expense account names and the names of its contacts. That provider's terms with your organisation apply.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with advertisers.

Sign in with Google

If you choose "Continue with Google", Google shares a limited part of your Google profile with us: your name, email address, and Google account identifier. We use this only to create your Tax App account, sign you in securely, and contact you about your account. We ask only for the basic profile and email scopes. We never ask for, receive, or access your Gmail, Google Drive, Contacts, Calendar, or any other Google service.

Tax App's use of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. We do not sell this data, do not use it for advertising, and do not transfer it to others except as needed to run the service or where the law requires. Using Google to sign in is entirely optional, and you can revoke Tax App's access at any time from your Google Account settings.

How long we keep it

Your records are kept for as long as you keep your account, because you may need tax records years later. If you delete your account (or ask us to delete it), your organisation's data is removed from live systems straight away and from backups within 7 days, with three exceptions. First, the audit trail of changes made in your organisation is kept for 7 years, so deleting an account can never erase the record of who changed what. Second, a copy of your data that was ready before you deleted your account can still be downloaded until its link expires, 90 days after it was ready. The record of who asked for it is removed automatically soon afterwards. Third, an email reply that someone sent to a message from the app is kept by our email service in Sydney for up to 30 days before it is deleted automatically.

If nobody signs in to an organisation for more than 3 months, we may delete it, as described in our terms of use. We may delete it sooner if one of its owners asks us to, or if we disabled it for breaking those terms. Before we do, we make a full copy of it and email its owners a link to download it. That copy is kept in New Zealand for 90 days and is then permanently deleted. Everything else is removed exactly as it is when you delete an account yourself.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act 2020, you can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it. You can also export your income and expense lists to CSV and your reports to PDF from the app at any time. You can delete your account and its data yourself, or ask us to do so. For anything else, send us a message through our contact form and we will reply.

Cookies and local storage

The app uses browser local storage to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences. This marketing site sets no cookies. It records page views and clicks on links into the app, with your IP address, using a per-visit identifier held in your browser's session storage. The identifier is not shared with any third party and is cleared when you close the tab. The contact page loads Google reCAPTCHA, which may set its own cookies, only after you start to use the form.

Changes

If this policy changes in an important way, we will note the change here. For significant changes, we will also email account holders. If we cannot resolve a concern, you can raise it with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).