Privacy Policy

1. What We Collect

Depending on how you use TaxRefit, we collect:

• Account details: name, email address, and optionally phone number and city.
• Authentication data: one-time passcodes sent to your email, and a securely hashed password if you choose to set one.
• Professional details: statutory registration number, qualification, category, and specialisations, for verification purposes.
• Student details: field of study, institution, and expected year of completion, for verification purposes.
• Content you submit: questions, answers, judgment-related interactions, community posts and replies, and reports you file.
• Technical data: IP address and basic request metadata, used for account security, abuse prevention, and enforcing fair-use limits (such as the daily cap on content reports).

2. How We Use It

• To create and secure your account and verify your identity via OTP.
• To route your question to professionals in the matching category, and to verify a professional's or student's statutory/institutional status.
• To review, moderate, and (where you've consented) screen submitted content for personal information before it's published.
• To respond to reports, enforce our Terms of Use, and maintain an internal activity log of staff moderation decisions.
• To send you account-related and OTP emails. Marketing and analytics processing only happens if you separately opt in — see Section 3.

3. Your Consent Choices

Account creation and OTP-based login require only the minimum data needed to operate your account ("core" processing). Marketing emails and analytics tracking are optional, defaulted to off, and can be turned on or off at any time from your Consent Dashboard, in line with Section 6 of the DPDP Act, 2023.

4. What We Never Do

• We never sell or rent your personal data to third parties.
• We never display your private contact details (email, phone) publicly. Professional/public profile pages only show what you've chosen to make public.
• We never charge professionals for visibility, ranking, or placement.

5. Sharing & Processors

We share data only where necessary to run the platform — for example, with our email delivery provider to send OTPs and notifications, and with our hosting provider. We do not share your data with advertisers or data brokers. Published professional profiles, judgment summaries, and public Q&A content are, by design, visible to anyone browsing the site.

6. Data Retention

We retain account data for as long as your account is active, and published content for as long as it remains live on the platform, except where you request deletion (see Section 8) or where we're required to retain records for legal or security purposes.

7. Security

We use OTP-based verification and securely hashed passwords for authentication, restrict moderation and administrative access to authorised staff, and log staff actions on user content for accountability. No online platform can guarantee absolute security, but we take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data.

8. Your Rights & How to Exercise Them

Under the DPDP Act, 2023, you have the right to access, correct, and request erasure of your personal data. Submit a request through our Data Rights Request form, or contact our Grievance Officer directly below.

9. Cookies

TaxRefit uses a session cookie to keep you logged in and functional cookies required for the platform to work. We do not use third-party advertising cookies.

10. Children's Data

TaxRefit is intended for use by individuals capable of entering into a binding contract under Indian law. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children in a manner inconsistent with the DPDP Act, 2023.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by an updated "Last updated" date above.