Terms of Service

1. The agreement

These terms are an agreement between you and Ibex Consulting (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2017/283495/07, trading as TaxRationale (“TaxRationale”, “we”, “us”). By creating an account or using taxrationale.com you accept them. You must be able to enter a binding agreement (18 or older, or assisted as the law requires). If you use TaxRationale on behalf of a practice or firm, you confirm you are authorised to accept these terms for it.

2. What TaxRationale is, and is not

TaxRationale is software that computes South African personal income tax from the figures you enter, shows the reasoning behind the result, and produces reports. It is a calculation tool.

It is not tax advice, financial advice or legal advice, and using it does not create an advisor relationship. The output depends on the accuracy and completeness of what you enter. You, or the practitioner acting for you, remain responsible for every return filed with SARS and for verifying that the output fits your circumstances.

3. Your account and keys

Your data is encrypted with keys derived from your master password, and your 24-word recovery key is the only way to reset a forgotten master password (a device where you enabled device unlock can still open your data locally). We cannot reset your password or recover your data, by design. You are responsible for keeping your password and recovery key safe. If both are lost, your encrypted data is permanently inaccessible, and these terms are your notice of that fact.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the service for anything unlawful, including evading tax obligations;
• probe, overload or interfere with the service, or attempt to access another user’s data;
• enter personal information about others unless you are entitled to process it (for practitioners: your clients’ information stays your responsibility under POPIA, as described in the Privacy Policy);
• resell the service without our written agreement.

Where you use TaxRationale to process client personal information, these terms are the written agreement contemplated by section 21 of POPIA: we act as your operator, we process that information only by storing and transmitting ciphertext on your instructions, we treat it as confidential, we maintain the security measures described on the Security page, and we will notify you without undue delay if we have reason to believe it has been accessed by an unauthorised person.

5. Free features and paid sync

The tax engine, every schedule and the reports are free. Encrypted sync and multi-device backup are the paid feature. Online checkout is not yet live; paid plans shown on the pricing page describe what will be charged when it is. Once live, subscriptions renew until cancelled, you can cancel from Settings effective at the end of the paid period, and card details are handled by our payment provider, not by us. If sync lapses, your data remains on your devices and export remains available; we may delete server-side ciphertext after a grace period of 90 days.

6. Your data

Your data is yours. You grant us only the limited licence needed to store and transmit your encrypted records so sync can work. We cannot read them, and we claim no other rights over them.

7. Accuracy

We check the engine’s rates, rebates and thresholds against the published SARS tax tables for each supported year of assessment, and we maintain an automated accuracy suite. Even so, the service is provided “as is”: we do not warrant that it is error-free or that its output is correct for your specific circumstances. Check the result before you rely on it, the way you would check any calculation that matters.

8. Liability

To the extent permitted by South African law (including the Consumer Protection Act where it applies), we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability for claims arising from the service is limited to the amounts you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

9. Ending the agreement

You can stop using TaxRationale at any time and delete your account from Settings, which removes your account record and server-side encrypted blobs. If you own a firm workspace that still has other members, you will be asked to remove them or hand the workspace over first. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these terms, with notice where reasonable.

10. Governing law and changes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, and the courts of Gauteng have jurisdiction. If we change these terms materially we will update this page, revise the effective date, and notify account holders by email before the change applies.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@taxrationale.com.