Credit Karma Privacy Policy

Effective date: January 1, 2020

Welcome to Credit Karma Tax!

Let us introduce ourselves — we are a wholly owned subsidiary of Credit Karma, Inc. ("Credit Karma").

We're here to provide you with tools and services that are designed to help you file your personal income taxes with the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") and most state tax authorities. Before you get started, we'd like to tell you about what we do with information we may collect about you and your tax household (your spouse, domestic partner and dependents).

When you use, access or interact with our Services (as defined in Section 1 of our Terms of Service, available here) you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and consenting to how we collect, share and otherwise use information about you as described in this Privacy Policy. You also consent to receive notifications concerning financial privacy from us electronically.

What This Policy Covers

As a financial services company, we’re providing this Privacy Policy to give you notice about how Credit Karma Tax, Inc. (collectively, "Credit Karma Tax", "we", "us" or "our") collects, shares and uses information in connection with your access and use of our Services. It also describes your choices regarding use, access and correction of your information. This Privacy Policy also explains how we may collect and use information from Credit Karma, as well as how we may share information with Credit Karma.

This Privacy Policy does not cover privacy practices outside of the Credit Karma Tax Services—for more information about Credit Karma’s privacy policy and practices please click here. This Privacy Policy also does not cover the privacy practices of third parties that we do not own or control.

That said, you should know that we may post links to third-party web sites or applications, including integrated features operated by third parties. When you leave our Services or interact with a third-party feature, you should also read the applicable third party’s privacy policies and terms of service to make sure you understand how they might collect and share information about you.

What Information We Collect

To put it simply, there are three main ways we collect information about you: when you give it to us, with automatic technologies and when we ask others for it. Allow us to explain.

Information You Provide to Us

We may ask you to provide certain information to us through various forms, features or other means throughout our Services. This includes the information you provide when you fill out our tax return forms, such as income, wage, investment, and other financial information we need to help you prepare your taxes. We may also collect information about your tax household (your spouse, domestic partner and dependent), if applicable, when we collect your information. The types of information we may collect from you fit in two general categories:

• Personal Information: This is information that identifies you or individuals in your tax household personally, such as name, address, email address, Social Security number, and government-issued photo identification.
• Non-Personal Information: This is information about you or your household that doesn’t identify you personally, like your gender or the types of income and expenses you have.

When we combine information that isn’t Personal Information (like Non-Personal Information or Usage Information, which we explain below) with Personal Information, we treat it like Personal Information for as long as it is combined.

Information We Automatically Collect

In addition to information you provide to us, we automatically collect certain information about how you access and interact with our Services ("Usage Information"). This Usage Information is a key part of how we improve your Credit Karma Tax experience and provide more personalized insights and recommendations. We and our business partners may use various technologies to collect and store Usage Information in connection with our Services. These may include things like cookies, browser web storage (e.g., HTML5), web beacons and similar technologies. There are three types of Usage Information we may collect:

• Device Information: This is information about how you access our Services, such as the operating system, hardware model, application or browser type and version, and unique identifiers associated with your device.
• Log Information: There are certain pieces of information we automatically collect in system logs or similar files about how you interact with our Services, such as which features you visit or click on. This Log Information may also include things like your IP address, browser or device configuration, and date and time of access and cookie information.
• Location Information: We may use certain information like your IP address or other Device Information or Log Information to estimate your location (e.g., your city or state). We may also request to use location-enabled services on your device (which typically provide GPS or Wi-Fi access point details) to enhance our Services. We will only use these location-enabled services on your device with your consent, though.

Information Third Parties Provide About You

We may collect information about you from third parties, including government agencies like the IRS and state tax authorities, for various operational purposes, including to provide our Services and to prevent fraud. For example, we may collect and use certain account registration information from Credit Karma, like your email address and password, to start your Credit Karma Tax profile, authenticate your identity, and help you access your account. We may also use information we collect from Credit Karma to help us optimize your experience on Credit Karma Tax.

How We Use the Information We Collect

We use the information we collect from you and third parties to operate our Services, communicate with you, help you file your tax returns, conduct research and development to improve or enhance our Services and our users’ experience, and promote our Services. These are a few examples:

• Helping You File Your Income Tax Returns: First and foremost, we want to help you file your taxes. The information we collect helps us facilitate your preparation and sending of your tax return to the IRS and certain state tax authorities, including e-filing (or paper filing) with these tax authorities.
• Identity Verification and Security: As we mentioned above, we may sometimes use information that you provide, as well as information we receive from third parties, to help protect the security of your identity, Credit Karma Tax account and Personal Information.
• Improving Our Recommendations and Insights: The information we collect helps us tailor our content and improve our recommendations. We’re constantly working on ways to better identify and present the information that’s most relevant to you.
• Communicating With You: We may use information we collect to provide you with member support or to send you things like service-related announcements, recommendations and other updates or promotions. Most of the time we’ll communicate with you by email, but we may also send you push notifications or even snail mail. For information on how to adjust your communications preferences and opt-out of receiving certain communications, check out our aptly named “Communications Preferences” section below.
• With Your Consent: There may also be other contexts in which we use specific types of Personal Information with your express consent.
• Legal Reasons: We reserve the right to access, use, preserve, transfer or disclose, at any time without notice to you, any information (including Personal Information) as reasonably necessary to:
  • Comply with any applicable law, regulation, subpoena or legal process, or respond to any governmental requests and cooperate with government authorities or law enforcement, if we believe such action is required or permitted by law; and
  • Enforce our Terms of Service, including investigating any potential violations.
• To prevent or detect fraud. We use the information to protect the safety, integrity, rights or security of our members, our Services or equipment, or any third party; detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues related to our Services or our partners; or in required institutional risk control programs.

When We Share the Information We Collect

First, we want to be clear that we do not sell or rent Personal Information about you or members of your tax household to unaffiliated third parties for their advertising or marketing lists or purposes.

Now that we've covered that, let us explain how we could share with third parties. We may share information (including Personal Information) about you or your tax household, with third parties only in the following circumstances:

• IRS and State Tax Authorities: In order to help you e-file your income taxes, we will share certain Personal Information with the IRS and state tax authorities. We may also share certain Personal Information to help prevent fraud and comply with state and federal law.
• Service Providers: We may share information with service providers, as permitted by law, in order to have them perform on our behalf activities we are permitted to conduct under this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service. This includes things like helping us design or operate our Services, process and administer your financial transactions, preventing fraud and complying with state and federal law. These service providers are authorized to use Personal Information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
• Affiliates: We may share certain information with our affiliated companies, such as Credit Karma, to help us provide our Services and manage your account.
• As Part of a Corporate Change: We may disclose and transfer information we've collected to a third party as part of, or in preparation for, a change of control, restructuring, corporate change, or sale or transfer of assets. If such a business transfer results in a material change in the treatment of your Personal Information, you will be notified by e-mail (using the primary email address on your account) or by a prominent notice on our site.
• For Legal Reasons: We reserve the right to transfer or disclose information about you to third parties for certain legal purposes, and as permitted by law. (You can read more about these in the “How Do We Use the Information We Collect?” section above.)
• To Prevent Fraud: We reserve the right to transfer or disclose information about you to third parties to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims, or other liability, and for required institutional risk controls.
• Research Purposes: We may share statistical compilations of anonymous and aggregate information to support improvements to our Services and research or public policy discussions concerning state or federal taxation.
• With Your Consent There may also be other contexts in which we share specific types of Personal Information with your express consent.

How to Access, Update or Deactivate Your Account

Accessing and Updating Your Account Information

You are responsible for maintaining the accuracy of the information you provide to us and our affiliates. You can access and make changes to certain Personal Information at any time by logging in to your Credit Karma account and updating your "My Profile" page.

Note that when you submit your tax return through Credit Karma Tax, it may be difficult and take extra time to correct information, which may result in a delay of your refund (if you are entitled to one), so please make sure your information is accurate when you enter it. It’s less of a headache for everyone that way!

Communications Preferences

You can manage your communications preferences for Credit Karma and its affiliates, including Credit Karma Tax, by visiting the Credit Karma communications preferences page. We’ll also include "unsubscribe" instructions in any marketing emails. Technology moves fast, so the types of communications and communication preference options might change from time to time.

Canceling Your Membership and Deactivating Your Account

We hope this never happens, but if you decide you no longer want to use our Services, you can cancel and deactivate your account on the Credit Karma help page.

If you are a former member, we may continue sharing information with our affiliated companies, such as Credit Karma, as described above.

One more thing to note: Due to our recordkeeping and information retention requirements, we do not delete information about you upon deactivation. We will, however, disable your account and stop sending you further communications. Furthermore, except to the extent necessary for legal or regulatory recordkeeping purposes, we anonymize the data in your online account two years after you deactivate your account. It may take a little more time for our automated backup systems to fully process the anonymized account, though.

Our Security Practices

We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with applicable law and federal standards. Our safeguards are reasonably designed to protect the confidentiality of Personal Information that we collect about you, including Social Security numbers, certain health coverage information, and other financial information (“Sensitive Personal Information”). We limit access to Sensitive Personal Information to help protect against their loss or misuse and we do not disclose Sensitive Personal Information to unaffiliated third parties except where such disclosure is required or permitted by law. We will only disclose your Sensitive Personal Information with your consent or as otherwise permitted by law.

If you have any questions about security on our Services, you can send an email to us at security@creditkarmatax.com.

Our Interest-Based Advertisement Practices

Advertising Service Providers

Some of our third-party service providers or business partners are advertising networks, marketing partners, publishers and other entities who perform analytics and advertise our products and services on websites not affiliated with us (“Advertising Service Providers”). In connection with these advertising services, we or our Advertising Service Providers, like Google Analytics (more on this below) may use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect behavioral information about how you use our site or other websites in order to perform tracking and marketing analytics or serve advertisements that are more likely to be of interest to you ("Interest-Based Advertisements"). Our Advertising Service Providers may permit you to opt out of all or some Interest-Based Advertisements on designated websites. For example, many of our Advertising Service Providers participate in the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out program or the Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out program. TrustArc also has an opt-out tool you may wish to use, which is accessible here.

Note that opting-out doesn't necessarily mean you won't see any advertisements—it just means that the advertising you see may be less interesting to you.

Disclosure Regarding Google Analytics Advertising Features

In addition to services from other Advertising Service Providers, we use the following Google Analytics Advertising Features as part of our marketing analytics and advertising: Remarketing with Google Analytics, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, DoubleClick Platform integrations and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting. We may also use other services provided by Google Analytics from time to time. Google provides users an opportunity to opt-out of the Google Analytics Features through Google's Ads Settings and their web browser opt-out plugin. For additional information on opting out of interest-based ads by Google, visit here.

Do Not Track

At this time, we do not respond to automated signals regarding tracking mechanisms, including “do not track” instructions from your browser. Please note that blocking cookies may affect your browsing experience on many sites and may limit your ability to use certain features of our Services, including many of the personalized features we provide for our members.

Transborder Transfer

Our Services are intended for use in the U.S. If you are located in the European Union or the United Kingdom, please be aware that information we collect (including cookies) will be processed and stored in the U.S., a jurisdiction in which the data protection and privacy laws may not offer the same level of protection as those in the country where you reside or are a citizen. By using our Services and providing information to us, you consent to the transfer to and processing of your Personal Information in the U.S.

Children

As cute as kids are, our Services are not designed to collect Personal Information from children who are under 18 years of age. We do not intend to or knowingly collect such information from children.

Your California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, you may be entitled to additional rights over your personal information. For more information about those rights and how to exercise them, please see our California privacy notice here, which is incorporated by reference into this policy.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

From time to time, we may change our Privacy Policy. If there are any material changes in the way we treat Personal Information, Credit Karma Tax will send a notice to the primary email address on your account or place a prominent notice on our platform before the change goes into effect. When you register and click the “agree” button next to our Privacy Policy, you are consenting to receive communications from us, including communications about our privacy policies and practices, electronically. Credit Karma Tax will also promptly make an updated Privacy Policy publicly available on our platform. Changes will be effective as soon as the revised Privacy Policy is posted unless otherwise stated.

Want More Information?

Thanks for taking the time to read through all this. If you have questions regarding this policy, privacy practices, or how your information is handled at Credit Karma Tax, you can email us at legal@creditkarmatax.com or write to us at: Credit Karma Tax, Inc. Attention: Legal Department, P.O. Box 520, San Francisco, CA 94104-0520. We always aim to get back to you within a reasonable time frame.

If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, you may also contact a third party independent recourse mechanism (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request

Where's My Refund?

If you would like more information about the status of your tax return refund, please visit Where's My Refund on IRS.gov or call 1-800-829-4477.

Looking for our previous version? You can access our prior Privacy Policy here