Privacy policy

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

What we collect

• Account details - your name, email address, and, if you sign in with Google, the basic profile Google shares (name, email, and account identifier). Passwords are encrypted in your browser before transmission and stored only as salted hashes.
• Financial records you enter - income, expenses, rental property and tenancy details, contacts, savings plans, and bank statement lines you upload for reconciliation.
• Documents you upload - invoices, tenancy agreements and similar attachments. These are stored privately: opening one in the app requires you to be signed in, and the app issues a link that works for a few minutes and then stops.
• Usage analytics - first-party events. In the app we record which screens are used and timing; on this marketing site we record page views and clicks on links into the app, with no 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. We use it to protect accounts against abuse and to see roughly which town or country a signup came from. To turn an address into a place we send it to an IP lookup service (ipwho.is); we send nothing else with it, and no name, email or financial record ever leaves our systems for this.
• Contact form messages - the name, email and message you send us.

Where it is stored

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

This is deliberate. New Zealand's tax rules keep business records here by default, but they also allow records to be stored overseas where Inland Revenue has approved it, or through a provider Inland Revenue has already approved, and offshore backups are permitted as long as the primary records stay in New Zealand. Keeping everything here means your records meet the rules without relying on any such approval.

Two supporting parts of the service run outside New Zealand, and neither stores your records: the API that the app talks to runs on Microsoft Azure in Sydney, and email is sent and received through AWS in Sydney.

Your documents are not publicly readable. Every time a document is opened, whether in the app or from a report, we issue a fresh short-lived link rather than 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 moment you ran the report, and they do not require a sign-in. This is deliberate: it lets you send a report to your accountant without giving them an account, while making sure a report that is forwarded on, or sits in an old inbox, cannot be used to reach your documents indefinitely.

Links are not renewable. Once the 14 days are up, the links stop working and the report has to be run again from the app by someone who is signed in. Anyone with the report while its links are live can open the documents it lists, so treat a fresh report like the documents themselves.

Who processes it

We use a small set of service providers, each only for what their role requires:

• AWS - data storage, document storage and backups (Auckland, New Zealand); email delivery and the app's static files (Sydney).
• Microsoft Azure - application hosting and AI document reading for invoice extraction.
• Resend and Amazon SES - transactional email (invitations, verification, password resets).
• Google - optional Sign in with Google, and reCAPTCHA bot protection on our contact page.
• AI providers - when you use invoice extraction, the uploaded document is processed to pre-fill the record. The provider is configurable; by default we use a major AI provider under an agreement that does not use your documents to train their models. Where your organisation supplies its own AI provider key, that provider's terms with you 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 request the basic profile and email scopes only - 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 stay for as long as you keep your account, because tax data is the kind of thing you may need years later. If you delete your account (or ask us to), your organisation's data is removed from live systems immediately and from backups within 7 days.

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. Beyond that, you can export your income and expense lists to CSV and your reports to PDF from inside the app at any time, and you can delete your account and its data yourself or ask us to. For anything else, send us a message through our contact form and we will respond.

Cookies and local storage

The app uses browser local storage to keep you signed in and remember preferences. This marketing site sets no cookies. It records anonymous page views and clicks on links into the app using a per-visit identifier held in your browser's session storage, which 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 interact with the form.

Changes

If this policy changes materially we will note it here and, for significant changes, email account holders. Concerns we cannot resolve can be raised with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).