Digital and Mobile Application Privacy Policy

At Liberty Tax®, (“Liberty,” “we,” or “our”), we recognize the importance of protecting your personal information. We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your information and want you to know the protective measures we take.

This Digital and Mobile Application Privacy Policy applies to our mobile applications, our online products and services and our websites, including, but not limited to www.libertytax.com, and www.libertytax.com/online, (collectively, our “Apps and Websites”). This policy also describes your choices regarding use, access and correction of your personal information. If you come to one of our offices for tax preparation you will be subject to a separate privacy policy which will be disclosed to you when you use those services.

Liberty may also offer the ability to apply for financial products through various affiliated and non-affiliated companies. Our privacy policies, and those of our non-affiliated partners, may vary depending on the type of service or products offered. This privacy policy applies solely to our Apps and Websites.

If you have questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at privacy@libtax.com or by calling 1-800-790-3863.

Personal Information We Collect.

When you visit our Apps and Websites, we collect information about your device (such as IP address, state, device identifier, app version, network data), login information, geolocation information, website usage data, mobile application data and email data. 

If you choose to use our mobile application or our online tax return preparation services, we will also collect, from you, your contact information (such as your name, address, email address, phone number), Social Security Number, date of birth, financial information (such as income, deductions, expenses), personal information about family members as provided by you and payment data, as required, to complete and pay for your tax return and for the provision of other services that you request and for legal and regulatory requirements. If you use our mobile application, we will also collect from you any documents that you upload to the application.

If you choose to submit your contact information to indicate an interest in either a franchise or a tax course, we collect your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address. If you choose to submit your e-mail address to indicate an interest in our electronic newsletter, we collect your e-mail address. We may receive your personal information (such as your name, address, email and phone number) if you participate in any of our surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose this information.

In the course of our providing to you the services that you request, we may receive information about you from our affiliates, business partners and third parties such as the IRS.

Other Information We Collect

On our Apps and Websites, we and our partners use cookies, flash cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.

We use cookies for online customer support, analytics service providers and other legal purposes. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.

Our Apps and Websites do not currently support “do not track” settings on your browser or have any similar mechanism that allows you to opt out of or otherwise control the collection of certain information about your online activities.

Behavioral Targeting/Re-Targeting

We partner with a third-party ad network to either display advertising on our Apps and Websites  to manage our advertising on other sites. Our ad network partner uses cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies to collect non-personal information about your activities on our Apps and Websites to provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests. If you wish to not have this information used for the purpose of serving you targeted ads, you may opt-out by clicking here. Please note this does not opt you out of being served advertising. You will continue to receive generic ads.

We use Google AdSense to publish ads on this site. When you view or click on an ad a cookie will be set to help better provide advertisements that may be of interest to you on our Apps and Websites or other websites. You may opt-out of the use of this cookie by visiting Google’s Advertising and Privacy page: https://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.

As is true of most Apps and Websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information may include Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. We do not link this automatically collected data to other information we collect about you.

We use local storage such as HTML5 to store content information and preferences. Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site or to display advertising based upon your Web browsing activity use LSOs such as HTML 5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.

How We May Use the Information

We may use your information collected via the Apps and Websites to provide the services and products that you request, to verify your identity, to process transactions that you initiate, to improve our Apps and Websites and to contact you regarding our services or your use of the Apps and Websites. To the extent permitted by law, we and our affiliates may also use your information to offer you relevant information, products and services offered by us or our business partners.  We may use your device information or geolocation information to identify products or services that might interest you and to enhance services that we provide. We may use your information for statistical and business purposes, but any data that is aggregated for statistical or business monitoring purposes will be rendered anonymous so as not to be personally identifiable.

 

Your information is not used for any reason outside the purposes described above except to the extent that you specifically authorize such use.  

 

Information We Disclose

We will share your personal information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this privacy policy. We do not sell your information to third parties.

Affiliated and non-affiliated third parties may be given access to your information only as permitted by law or upon your express authorization. Our affiliated and non-affiliated third parties may offer you the opportunity to receive information concerning their products and services. If you elect to receive such communications from these third-parties, we may share your name and contact information.

If you input information into our Apps and Websites to express an interest in being contacted about tax preparation or tax courses, your name and contact information may be transferred to a local Liberty Tax Service® office, most of which are franchised, so the office may contact you. Also, we may contact you directly about tax return preparation or tax courses, or we may contact you about franchise opportunities with us.  

If you entered your contact information into our Apps or Websites to express an interest in being contacted about a franchise opportunity, we use your information to contact you about this opportunity. If you submitted your e-mail address to sign up for our electronic newsletter, we use your e-mail address to e-mail our newsletter to you and we may contact you about franchise opportunities with us. If you submitted your e-mail address to us for any purpose, we may contact you to invite you to prepare your tax return with us and send you marketing messages. You may choose to stop receiving our newsletter or marketing emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails, accessing the email preferences in your account settings page or you can contact us at privacy@libtax.com.

We may disclose or use the registration information that you provide when creating an account to show you tailored advertising or to send you marketing messages. We may disclose your registration information to non-affiliated third parties that perform operational, marketing, financial or accounting services for us. These companies are authorized to use your registration information only as necessary to provide these services to us. Such sharing will be done in accordance with applicable law.

If you use our Apps and Websites for tax return preparation, we will share your information with the Internal Revenue Service, state tax authorities, and with other third parties to the extent necessary to provide you with the services and products you have selected; provided, however, that our use of the information you submit for the purpose of preparing and filing your tax returns may be limited by the Internal Revenue Code, § 7216, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and other law. We will not use or disclose to third parties your personal tax return information for any purpose other than the preparing, assisting you in preparing, or filing your tax return, unless you authorize us by providing to us written consent to use or disclose or unless expressly required or authorized by law or pursuant to a court order.

We may disclose your information to non-affiliated third parties that perform operational, marketing or accounting services for us and who are required to use such information only to perform services on our behalf. Our sharing of information may be with a financial product provider with whom we have a joint-marketing agreement or non-financial companies that provides technical services such as software services. These companies are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us. Such sharing will be done in accordance with applicable law. We also may share aggregated, or de-identified information, which cannot reasonably be used to identify you.

In certain situations, Liberty may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.  

We may also disclose or transfer your information in response to legal process such as to comply with a subpoena, or similar legal process or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request, where required by applicable law, or if we are acquired by or merged with another company. If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, we may disclose your information though you will be notified a prominent notice on our Apps and Websites of any change in ownership, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information.

Updating Your Information

You may access, correct, or request deletion of your personal information by contacting privacy@libtax.com.

If you are using our Apps and Websites to prepare and file your tax returns, you may update your log in and password information by logging into your account or by contacting customer support at onlinesupport@libtax.com. Other information we collect as described in this privacy policy is not stored in an online accessible format or does not identify you personally. For all other inquiries related to your information, including updating or deactivation, deleting or no longer using your submitted information please contact us via privacy@libtax.com or by postal mail to Liberty Tax®, Inc. c/o Privacy, 1716 Corporate Landing Parkway, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23454. 

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services or as required under applicable law. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Information Security

We maintain physical, electronic and procedural security measures that comply with applicable legal and regulatory standards to safeguard your personal information. We follow generally accepted standards, such as encryption and secure socket layer technology, to protect the personal information you submit to us, whether that information is in transit or at rest. No method of transmission over the Internet and no method of electronic storage is completely secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Apps and Websites, you can contact us at privacy@libtax.com.

 

Additional Information

Links to 3rd Party Sites. Our Apps and Websites include links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from ours. 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.

Blogs. Our Apps and Websites may offer publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why. Our blog is also managed by a third-party application that may require you to register to post a comment. We do not have access or control of the information posted to the blog. You will need to contact or login into the third-party application if you want the personal information that was posted to the comments section removed. To learn how the third-party application uses your information, please review their privacy policy. 

Social Media Widgets. Our Apps and Websites may include Social Media Features, such as the Facebook Like button and Widgets, such as the Share this button or interactive mini-programs that run on our site. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

Acceptance of These Terms

You understand that your use of our Apps and Webs is governed by this privacy policy. If you do not agree with these terms, you should not use the Apps or Websites. Your continued use of our Apps or Websites indicates your acceptance of these terms.  

This privacy policy is effective July 2020.

Because privacy is important, we pledge to work with you to protect and safeguard the security of your personal customer information. If this privacy policy changes, we will notify you of the changes by posting a notice on our Apps and Websites. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, you may contact us by calling 800-790-3836 or at  privacy@libtax.com or by mail at Privacy, Liberty Tax Service®, 1716 Corporate Landing Parkway, Virginia Beach, Virginia 23454.