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Terms of Service & Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 June 2026 · Governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

Important disclaimer Terms of Service Privacy Policy

Terms of Service

1. The service

SnapTax is a Progressive Web App that helps South African individuals and self-employed people record expenses, income, kilometres and supporting documents, and generate reports for SARS. The service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis without warranties of uninterrupted availability or fitness for a particular purpose.

2. Your account

You must provide accurate registration details, keep your password secure, and are responsible for activity under your account. Accounts are individual; do not share login credentials. We may suspend accounts that are misused or used unlawfully.

3. Pricing, free trial & subscriptions

• New accounts receive a 14-day free trial with full access — no card required.
• After the trial, continued access requires a subscription: R399 per month or R3 999 per year (saves R789/yr).
• Card & EFT subscriptions (via Paystack) renew automatically until cancelled. Crypto payments (via Coinbase Commerce) cover a single period and do not auto-renew.

4. Cancellation policy

You may cancel your subscription at any time from the Profile → Subscription screen, or by emailing privacy@snaptax.co.za. On cancellation you retain full access until the end of the period already paid for; auto-renewal is stopped immediately, no further charges will be made. There is no cancellation fee or lock-in period.

5. Refund policy

Because every user gets a 14-day free trial to fully evaluate SnapTax before paying, all subscription payments are non-refundable once the trial has ended and the first charge is taken.

Exception — billing errors: if you were charged in error (e.g. duplicate charge, charge after cancellation, charged for a service you did not receive), email privacy@snaptax.co.za within 30 days with your transaction reference. Verified billing errors are refunded within 5 business days via the original Paystack method.

Disputes & chargebacks: we encourage you to email us first so we can resolve the issue directly. If a chargeback is filed, we will respond to Paystack with the transaction history, your subscription record, and the trial period afforded before the charge.

5. Your records & retention

SARS requires taxpayers to keep supporting records for at least five years. You are responsible for retaining your own records; the "Download everything" export is provided so you can keep a personal copy. SnapTax may purge older tax-year data from the live app per its retention policy after notifying you in-app.

6. Acceptable use

Do not use SnapTax for unlawful purposes, upload content you have no right to, or attempt to disrupt or reverse-engineer the service.

7. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by South African law, SnapTax's total liability arising from your use of the service is limited to the fees you paid in the three months preceding the claim. SnapTax is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for SARS assessments, penalties or interest.

8. Changes & termination

We may update these terms or the service; material changes will be notified in-app. You may stop using SnapTax at any time. These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

Privacy Policy (POPIA)

This policy explains how SnapTax processes your personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (POPIA). We are the Responsible Party for your information; our Information Officer is named below.

Responsible Party & Information Officer

Responsible Party: SnapTax, operating in the Republic of South Africa.
Information Officer: Eugene Louw · privacy@snaptax.co.za
The Information Officer is the point of contact for any POPIA request, complaint or enquiry, and liaises with the Information Regulator on behalf of SnapTax.

1. What personal information we collect

• Account information — name, email address, password (stored only as a salted PBKDF2-SHA256 hash, never in plain text), optional South African ID number, optional SARS tax reference, optional profile type and income figures you enter.
• Financial records — expenses, income entries, kilometres travelled, and any documents you upload (receipts, invoices, bank statements, tax certificates).
• Payment information — handled directly by Paystack or Coinbase Commerce; we receive only a payment reference and status, never your card or wallet details.
• Technical data — session identifiers, IP address (for security and abuse-prevention only), basic usage counts (logins, last active).

We do not collect special personal information (children's data, health, religion, political views, biometrics or criminal history) by design.

2. Why we process it (lawful purpose)

To provide the service you signed up for: storing and organising your tax records, extracting text from documents you upload, generating SARS-ready reports, and processing your subscription. The legal grounds for processing are performance of our agreement with you (POPIA s.11(1)(b)) and your consent at registration (POPIA s.11(1)(a)). We do not use your data for direct marketing or profile-building, and we will not process it for any new purpose without first informing you.

3. How it is stored & secured

Application data is hosted on infrastructure in the Johannesburg (jnb) region, keeping the primary processing footprint inside South Africa. Our technical safeguards include:

• Encryption in transit: HTTPS-only with HSTS pinning.
• Encryption at rest: uploaded receipts, invoices and bank statements are encrypted with authenticated symmetric encryption (Fernet, AES-128-CBC + HMAC-SHA256). Sensitive profile fields — SA ID number, SARS tax number and banking details — are encrypted per field with the same scheme.
• Password hashing: PBKDF2-SHA256 with a per-user salt; we never store or have access to your password.
• Session protection: HttpOnly + Secure cookies with strict same-site policy; login-attempt lockout after repeated failures; cross-site request blocking on state-changing actions; security headers including HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options DENY and X-Content-Type-Options nosniff.
• Access control: only your own data is reachable from your account; administrative access is restricted, logged, and may not bypass decryption keys you have not given us.

4. Who we share it with (operators / cross-border transfers)

We do not sell your information. We use a small number of trusted operators (POPIA s.21) only to deliver the service. Some of these process data outside South Africa; we rely on POPIA s.72(1)(a) (the recipient is subject to a binding instrument enforcing protection substantially similar to POPIA, via the operator's data-processing agreement and SCCs):

• Anthropic (USA) — documents you upload for auto-extract are sent to Anthropic's Claude API to read the text. Anthropic acts as our processor and contractually does not use your data to train models. You may decline this feature by not using "Auto-extract".
• Paystack (South Africa & Nigeria) and Coinbase Commerce (USA) — to process subscription payments. They receive only what they need to charge you.
• Resend (USA) — to deliver account-related emails (OTP codes, receipts). They receive your email address and the message content.
• Fly.io (South Africa: jnb region) — the cloud platform on which SnapTax runs.

5. How long we keep it (retention)

SARS requires taxpayers to keep supporting records for at least five years after the relevant tax submission. We retain your records for that period by default so they remain available if SARS audits you. You can export or delete your records earlier at any time. After account deletion (see section 7), your live data is purged immediately and removed from encrypted backups within 30 days.

6. Your rights as a data subject

Under POPIA you have the right to:

• Be told what personal information we hold about you and where we obtained it.
• Access your information — use the "Download everything" export in the app to receive a complete copy.
• Correct information that is inaccurate — edit it in-app or contact us.
• Delete your information (right to erasure) — see section 7.
• Object to processing on reasonable grounds.
• Complain to the Information Regulator (see section 9) if you believe we have not handled your information lawfully.

7. Deleting your account

You can permanently delete your SnapTax account and all of your data — expenses, income, kilometre logbook, documents and uploaded receipts — at any time:

• In the app: open your profile (top-right), then tap "Delete my account" and confirm with your password.
• By email: if you can't access the app, email privacy@snaptax.co.za from your registered address and we will delete your account and data within 7 business days.

Deletion of live data is immediate and irreversible. Backup copies are overwritten within 30 days.

8. Data breach notification

POPIA s.22 obliges us to notify the Information Regulator and affected users "as soon as reasonably possible" after discovering a security compromise that has resulted in, or is reasonably likely to result in, access to or acquisition of your personal information by an unauthorised person. Our commitment is to notify you by email within 72 hours of confirming such a breach, describing what happened, what information was involved, and what steps you should take.

9. Information Regulator

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a privacy enquiry or complaint, you may contact the Information Regulator of South Africa:

JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001
Complaints: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
General: inforeg@justice.gov.za
Website: inforegulator.org.za

10. Children

SnapTax is intended for adult taxpayers. We do not knowingly process personal information of children under 18. If you believe we have, contact the Information Officer and we will delete it.

11. Contact

For any privacy question or to exercise your rights, contact our Information Officer at privacy@snaptax.co.za.

This document is reviewed regularly. Material changes will be notified in-app and the "Last updated" date at the top will change.