Welcome to Etax.
Etax understands that you, as an Etax website visitor and as a user of Etax’s services, are concerned about your privacy.
First of all, Etax does not rent or sell your email or any other details to anyone for any reason.
When you provide details of a Government-issued ID, it is used only for a one-time ID check, and your ID details are not saved by Etax.
A very basic summary of what we do with your other details is, we’ll collect some simple information and use cookies in order to offer you relevant and useful content and notices, and, if you decide to start a tax return and use our services, then we’ll save the information you enter on our website only for the purpose of preparing, checking and lodging your tax return to the ATO and for providing our tax agent service to you and delivering tax-related information and reminders to you.
Now let’s cover the details in a way that lawyers like to do…
This Privacy Policy sets out our commitment to protecting the privacy of personal information provided to us, or otherwise collected by us, offline or online, including through our website and mobile application (Site). In this Privacy Policy we, us or our means Etax Accountants Pty Ltd ACN 083 958 150.
We will only collect your personal information where it will help us improve your experience or where we require your personal information to provide our Site and/or our services to you.
Where you are browsing on the Site and you have not logged in, our system will only record basic details about your visit such as the date and time of your visit to our Site, the pages viewed and the information downloaded.
If you choose to use one of our interactive facilities, including the Etax Help service and forms for preparing your online tax return, to be able to provide these facilities to you, our system will record the information you enter during your use of these facilitates.
Please continue reading for more details on how we handle your personal information.
Verifying your identity
The ATO requires identity verification for every taxpayer lodging a tax return. When you start a tax return at Etax, you will see several steps for confirming your identity, including an ID lookup tool. You add the details from a Government-issued ID, and those details are verified for accuracy with the agency that issued the ID, via a Government-approved 3rd-party “DVS gateway provider”. Your ID details are only used for the one-time ID check. Neither Etax, nor the gateway provider, will retain or save your ID details; we only keep a record of a pass or fail in the ID check.
If you are not able or not willing to provide enough details for Etax to positively verify your identity, Etax will not be able to provide tax agent services to you and will not lodge your tax return. Failing to provide ID also means some of the most helpful parts of the Etax return, including prefill, will not be available to you. If you have a complaint about identity verification you may lodge a complaint by the methods outlined on our Terms and Conditions.
How we handle email
We will preserve the content of any email that you send us, if we believe that we have a legal requirement to do so. Your email message content may be monitored by our Etax employees for security issues including where email abuse is suspected; our response to you may be monitored for quality assurance issues.
If you’d like to unsubscribe from promotional emails, please click the unsubscribe link in the footer of an email or if you prefer simply contact us at [email protected]. Please note, if you keep us appointed as your tax agent, then we have an obligation to send important tax related correspondence to you. Unsubscribing from our promotional emails will not affect obligatory tax related messages or notifications.
Collection and use of personal information
In providing our Site and services to you, we may collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for the following purposes:
- to enable you to access and use our Site, services and associated applications;
- to provide our services and facilities to you, including the preparation and lodgement of tax returns;
- to contact and communicate with you about our Site and services;
- for internal record keeping, administrative purposes, invoicing and billing purposes;
- to verify your identity (the ATO requires verification of a taxpayer’s identity before tax returns are lodged);
- to enable the exchange of funds such as tax refunds or fees;
- for analytics, market research and business development, including to operate and improve our Site, associated applications and associated social media platforms;
- for advertising and marketing, including to send you promotional information about our products and services that we consider may be of interest to you; and
- to comply with our legal obligations and resolve any disputes that we may have.
Personal information
The types of personal information you may share with us when using our Site and services include:
- your title, legal names and a username;
- your contact details, including email address, postal address, home address and/or telephone number (mobile/work/home);
- your tax file number;
- your date of birth;
- your gender;
- your Australian citizenship status;
- your bank account details to receive your tax refund;
- details from your ID documents such as drivers licence, passport, or other forms of ID;
- your credit card details (only transmitted at time of transaction, not viewed or stored by Etax);
- your tax related debts, such as a higher education loan program debt;
- your occupation;
- your income types and amounts, including your salary or wages, dividends, allowances, government allowances, pensions, interest and rent received;
- information you provide to us through customer surveys;
- your sensitive information as set out below;
- details of products and services we have provided to you and/or that you have enquired about, and our response to you;
- the content of any email you send to us;
- your browser session and geo-location data, device and network information, statistics on page views and sessions, acquisition sources, search queries and/or browsing behaviour;
- information about your access and use of our Site, including through the use of Internet cookies, your communications with our Site, the type of browser you are using, the type of operating system you are using and the domain name of your Internet service provider;
- additional personal information that you provide to us, directly or indirectly, through your use of our Site, associated applications and/or accounts from which you permit us to collect information; and
- any other personal information requested by us and/or provided by you or a third party.
We may collect these types of personal information directly from you or where that is not possible or practicable, we may also collect this information from third parties.
Disclosure of personal information to third parties
In providing our Site and services to you, we may disclose personal information to:
- our employees, contractors and/or related entities (who may be located overseas);
- third party credit card transaction gateway providers;
- third party service providers for the purpose of enabling them to assist us in provide our services to you, including (without limitation) IT service providers, online marketing or advertising service providers and professional advisors;
- the organisation that issued your government ID documents, via the Australian Government’s Document Verification Service (DVS) and an Australian DVS service provider;
- our existing or potential agents or business partners;
- anyone to whom our business or assets (or any part of them) are, or may (in good faith) be, transferred;
- courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights;
- third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in providing information, products, services or direct marketing to you such as Facebook and Google. This may include parties located, or that store data, outside of Australia; and
- third parties to collect and process data, such as Google Analytics. This may include parties that store data outside of Australia.
By providing us with personal information, you consent to the disclosure of your information outside of Australia and acknowledge that where we disclose personal information to a third party outside of Australia, we will require the third party to use the personal information only for the specific purposes for which we supply the information to them.
How we treat personal information that is also sensitive information
Sensitive information is a sub-set of personal information that is given a higher level of protection under the Australian Privacy Principles. Sensitive information means information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion, trade union or other professional associations or memberships, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation or practices, criminal records, health information or biometric information.
We will not collect sensitive information without your consent. The type of sensitive information we may collect about you includes your membership of a political association, professional or trade association or trade union where you choose to enter these details when using our Site and services.
Provided you consent, your sensitive information will only be used and disclosed for purposes relating to the primary purpose for which the sensitive information was collected, including providing our tax agent services to you. Although, sensitive information may also be used or disclosed if required or authorised by law.
Your rights and controlling your personal information
Choice and consent: Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By providing personal information to us, you understand that we will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You do not have to provide personal information to us, however, if you do not, it may affect your use of this Site or the service and facilities offered on or through it.
Information from third parties: If we receive personal information about you from a third party, we will protect it as set out in this Privacy Policy. If you are a third party providing personal information about somebody else, you represent and warrant that you have such person’s consent to provide the personal information to us.
Restrict: If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by contacting us using the details below.
Access: You may request details of the personal information that we hold about you. An administrative fee may be payable for the provision of such information.
Correction: If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please contact us using the details below. We will take reasonable steps to correct any information found to be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or out of date.
Complaints: If you wish to make a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact us using the details below and provide us with full details of the complaint. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take to deal with your complaint.
Unsubscribe: To unsubscribe from our e-mail database or opt-out of communications (including marketing communications), please contact us using the details below or opt-out using the opt-out facilities provided in the communication.
Storage and security
We are committed to ensuring that the personal information we collect is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the personal information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. Please see our Security Statement for further information.
Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed as totally secure. Accordingly, although we strive to protect such information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we take reasonable steps to preserve the security of the information in our own systems.
Cookies and web beacons
We may use cookies on our Site from time to time. Cookies are text files placed in your computer’s browser to store your preferences. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your email address or other personally identifiable information. However, they do allow third parties, such as Google and Facebook, to cause our advertisements to appear on your social media and online media feeds as part of retargeting campaigns. If and when you choose to provide our Site with personal information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.
Areas of the Site that do not require a login may allocate a cookie for purpose of:
- Identifying your Internet browser as one connecting to or receiving Etax services; and
- Storing information related to personalisation of the Site.
We also use cookies for secure services (that is, an area of the Site where you are required to log on). These cookies are used for a variety of purposes, including for security and personalisation reasons.
You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if your browser is configured to reject all cookies you will be unable to use secure services on the Site that require cookies in order for you to participate. You may still be able to use some of the information-only pages even if you do not accept cookies.
We may use web beacons on our Site from time to time. Web beacons (also known as Clear GIFs) are small pieces of code placed on a web page to monitor the visitor’s behaviour and collect data about the visitor’s viewing of a web page. For example, web beacons can be used to count the users who visit a web page or to deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing that page.
We may use Google Analytics to collect and process data. To find out how Google uses data when you use third party websites or applications, please see www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ or any other URL Google may use from time to time. You can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads using Google’s Ads Settings.
Amendments
We may, at any time and at our discretion, vary this Privacy Policy by publishing the amended Privacy Policy on our Site. We recommend you check our Site regularly to ensure you are aware of our current Privacy Policy.
For any questions or notices, please contact us at:
Etax Accountants Pty Ltd ACN 083 958 150
Email: [email protected]
Last update: April 2025
