Cookie Tax "Recipes"

health-savings-account-hsa

Unsplash @erols

What are cookies? Well, there are cookies as shown in the image on your right - or above - and there is the term "cookie" as it was coined by web browser programmer Lou Montulli. It was derived from the term "magic cookie" which is a packet of data a program receives and sends back unchanged, used by Unix programmers.

The purpose of the cookie is to help the taxpert.com website keep track of your visits and activity. Many people find this useful so that they can store passwords on commonly used sites, or simply so they know what sites they have visited or downloaded in the past. Session cookies are used only when a person is actively navigating a website; once you leave the site, the session cookie disappears. Tracking cookies may be used to create long-term records of multiple visits to the same site. Authentication cookies track whether a user is logged in, and if so, under what name.

Cookies We Collect As You Use Our Services

Required Cookies
These cookies are required to enable core site functionality and are automatically enabled when you use this site.

  • Remember log-in details, session state, error messages, and provide secure log-in
  • Maintain site security: IP address, location, country, date/time and interaction with our app
  • Keep a record of your most recent visit or to record your login information
  • Save the user's session and carry out other activities that are strictly necessary for the app operation in relation to the distribution of traffic
  • Remember your task or transaction progress.

Functional Cookies
These cookies enable additional functionality like saving preferences, allowing social interactions, and analyzing usage for site optimization.

Required Cookies plus:

  • Analyze site usage to provide custom content
  • Conduct analytics to optimize site functionality
  • Remember the subscription plan you selected
  • Device/browser type, settings, operating system to make sure the website looks consistent.

Advertising Cookies
These cookies are used by us and third parties to serve ads that are relevant to your interests. The following companies require you to select your interest-based advertising preferences directly on their sites: Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Required and Functional Cookies plus:

  • Provide you with interest-based offers or ads
  • Allows Google and its partners to provide you with interest-based ads
  • Allow you to share pages with social networks
  • Allow you to post comments.

What do we do with this information:

  • Customize our services for you.
  • Speed up and secure sign up and sign in processes and account information.
  • Analyze User behavior so we can improve existing service and build new services.

We don’t share information that personally identifies you (e.g. your name or email, etc.) with third parties (e.g. advertisers).

Additional types of cookies or third parties that install cookies: Some of the services listed below collect statistics in an anonymously and aggregated form and may not require the consent of the user or may be managed directly by the owner - depending on how they are described - without the help of third parties.

Third parties we use: The Taxpert® app monitors and analyzes web traffic internally via the third party service Google Analytics to keep track of website behavior.

If any third party operated services are listed among the tools below, these may be used to track users’ browsing habits – in addition to the information specified herein and without the owner’s knowledge. Please refer to the privacy policy of the listed services for detailed information.

How to Delete Cookies

Banning all cookies makes some websites difficult or impossible to navigate. However, a setting that controls or limits third-party and tracking cookies can help protect your privacy while still making it possible to shop online and carry out similar activities. Where the installation of cookies is based on consent, such consent can be freely withdrawn at any time following the instructions provided in this document.

Here’s how to manage your cookies in order to protect your online activity from prying eyes: Open your browser. Because cookies are stored in your web browser, the first step is to open your browser. Popular browsers include Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

Find the cookie storage. Each browser stores cookies in a slightly different location. In Internet Explorer 9, for example, you can find them by clicking “Tools,” then “Internet Options,” then “Privacy.” In Chrome, choose the Chrome menu on the toolbar, then click “Privacy.” Most browsers store cookie settings under the privacy options. Choose your setting. Every browser gives you a range of options for handling cookies. Internet Explorer, for instance, has a slider that you can adjust for greater or lesser amounts of protection. Chrome both lets you delete existing cookies in a single click and choose how future cookies are collected or stored.

Exporting and Deleting Your Data

You can download your current or past tax return file(s) from inside your account. We do retain records of completed tax returns for legal purposes. Please contact support to have your account disabled. You can remove all your tax information entered manually with the exception of some necessary fields we maintain to identify your account. 

In some cases, we retain data logs and account deletion information for a limited time period for legitimate business or legal purposes. Furthermore, we want to ensure that our services protect information from accidental or malicious deletion. Because of this, there may be delays between when you delete something and when copies are deleted from our active and backup services.

Spam Policy

Taxpert® is committed to permission-based email marketing practice and, as a result, has established this no-tolerance Anti-Spam Policy. Taxpert® will occasionally update this Anti-Spam Policy. When it does, Taxpert® will also revise the “last update” date at the top of this Anti-Spam Policy. For changes to this policy, Taxpert® will notify you (the customer) by placing a notice on its website home page.

What is Spam?
Spam is commercial email or unsolicited bulk email, including “junk mail”, which has not been requested by the recipient. It is intrusive and often irrelevant or offensive, and it wastes valuable resources. Spam messages are the opposite of permission-based email, which are normally anticipated, personal, relevant, and/or associated with a pre-existing business or personal relationship. Inappropriate newsgroup activities, consisting of excessive posting of the same materials to several newsgroups, are also deemed to be spam.

Preventing Spam
Customers of Taxpert® products and services have agreed during their registration process, upon accepting the Terms of Use, to comply with this Anti-Spam Policy. Specifically, each customer agrees not to use the Taxpert® products or services to send unsolicited email or bulk email, whether or not for commercial purposes. Taxpert® reserves the right to determine in its sole discretion what constitutes actionable spam, as well as what measures are necessary in response to such spam activities.

How Taxpert® Helps You to Avoid Spamming
Taxpert® has developed its Internet marketing tools to incorporate a strict permission-based philosophy. This anti-spam philosophy is implemented through the following:

  • Communication and Agreement – The Terms of Use that you have agreed to as part of registering for the Taxpert® products and services state how and for what purposes you can collect your site visitor addresses, and that you will follow the taxpert.com Privacy Policy and Anti-Spam Policy.
  • Unsubscription – Each email created using Taxpert® products contains an “unsubscribe link." If your website visitors use the link to request that they be unsubscribed, your subscriber lists will automatically be adjusted to eliminate the prospect of sending unwanted email to such persons. Additionally, each person on your subscriber list has the option of unsubscribing through a web-based method provided on the Taxpert® website. Customers of Taxpert® who try to remove the unsubscribe link will be warned that they are doing so, and if they persist in having the link removed or deactivated in any way, then Taxpert® will have the right to terminate their account.
  • Purchased Mailing Lists - Mass mailings to purchased email lists are not allowed. Taxpert® only allows opt-in mailing lists. Purchased or inherited lists are by definition not opt-in. Similarly, you cannot use an email list relating to particular subject matter, and then use it for an unrelated topic.

Laws Restricting Spam

Spam laws vary from state to state, and from country to country. This taxpert.com Anti-Spam Policy has been developed to conform to the highest commercially reasonable standards. As a result, and without limiting the general prohibitions against all spam activities, the following are expressly prohibited:

  • Use of false headers, or other false information, to identify the point of origin or the transmission path of the email, or to hide the true origin of the email sender,
  • Unauthorized use of a third party’s Internet domain name without the permission of such third party, to make it appear that the third party was the point of origin of the email,
  • Use of any false or misleading information in the subject line of the email, and
  • Assisting any person in using the products or services of Taxpert® for any of these previously mentioned activities.

Questions to Ask Yourself

To help in establishing whether you are participating in activities constituting spam, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Are you sending email to non-specific addresses, such as info@smith.com or sales@smith.com?
  • Have you deliberately falsified your transmission path information or originating address?
  • Are you sending email to mailing lists or distribution lists, which then send indirectly to various other email addresses?
  • Have you imported for use a purchased list of any type?
  • Are you continuing to mail to anyone who has asked to be deleted from your mailing list?
  • Does your email not provide a fully functioning link to unsubscribe?
  • Does you email subject line contain false or misleading information?
  • Have you used a third party’s email address or domain name without the party’s consent?

If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, you are likely involved in spam activities and should contact Taxpert® customer support service at our helpdesk.

Measures to Enforce the Anti-Spam Policy
Any Taxpert® customer found to be using taxpert.com products or services for spamming purposes may, at taxpert.com’s discretion, be immediately cut off from use of all Taxpert® products and services and/or fined US$1,000 per occurrence, with no refund of fees that have been paid.

Taxpert® warns all of its customers when signing up that if they participate in spamming activities, they will be subject to the loss of taxpert.com services, fines, and possible legal action.

Taxpert® has the right to actively review its customers’ subscriber lists and email for suspiciously large broadcasts. If Taxpert® finds any customers to be spamming, it will issue a warning, and if the activities are serious enough, taxpert.com will take action immediately. If Taxpert® has any reason to believe that the customer, despite warning being given, threatens to or is continuing to send spam, then taxpert.com may take action immediately, including disabling the customer’s account and/or reporting the customer and the incident to the proper authorities.

Taxpert® does not attempt to censor any content, nor to curtail the business of its customers. However, spam activities do not fall within uses authorized by taxpert.com, and will not be tolerated.

Reporting Spam
If you believe that you have received spam from or through taxpert.com’s facilities, please send a complaint from your email account along with the unsolicited email, with completed header, to our helpdesk. Please provide any other information that you believe may help us in our investigation. ® does not investigate or take any action based on “anonymous” spam complaints.

False Spam Complaints
Taxpert® supports the efforts of various organizations working to responsibly eliminate spam activities. However, if an individual has opted-in to receive email from a customer of Taxpert®, and then falsely or maliciously files a spam complaint against taxpert.com or its customers, taxpert.com will cooperate fully with the appropriate agencies to ban the complainant from use of anti-spam software and the Internet community.

Review the taxpert.com Privacy Policy.

TurboTax® is a registered trademark of Intuit, Inc.
H&R Block® is a registered trademark of HRB Innovations, Inc.