Privacy and personal information

This website is operated by Tax Relief SA (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in South Africa under registration number 2025/424289/07. Our correspondence address is 1 The Avenue, Norwood, Johannesburg 2192, South Africa. We are an independent tax assistance and dispute advisory service and are not part of SARS. In this policy, “Tax Relief SA”, “we” and “us” mean Tax Relief SA (Pty) Ltd. Our address is for correspondence only — we do not accept walk-in visits; please contact us to arrange a telephone or video consultation.

We collect only what is needed to respond to an enquiry, assess a tax matter and carry out any engagement you agree to. The categories we handle are:

• Contact and identity details you give us — your name, a phone number and an email address.
• Enquiry context — the tax issue category you select, and optional details such as taxpayer type, an urgent-notice indicator, a broad debt band, and any brief notes you choose to add.
• Booking details — the contact information and appointment preferences you enter when you book a discovery call through the linked calendar.
• Client engagement records — information created during an agreed engagement, such as correspondence, scope notes and the documents you provide through authorised channels as the matter progresses.

• Directly from you — when you complete the assessment form, book a discovery call, email or speak with us, or provide information during an engagement.
• From the systems you authorise — for example, information you enter into the linked calendar or CRM when you book or respond to a request.
• From your devices and browser — limited technical information such as browser type, when you visit this website, used only to keep the site working and, where you accept, to measure aggregate usage as described in section 13.

We do not purchase personal information lists, and we do not scrape personal data from other sources to build profiles about you.

Your name, your preferred contact method and its value, and the tax issue category are required so we can respond to your enquiry. Your second contact channel, taxpayer type, urgent-notice indicator, debt band, notes and marketing preference are optional. Booking a discovery call requires the contact details the linked calendar asks for. During an engagement, the information needed to act on your behalf is set out in the written scope for that matter.

We process personal information for these purposes, relying on the lawful bases set out in the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA):

• To respond to your enquiry and carry out an initial confidential assessment — processing necessary to take steps at your request before entering an engagement.
• To contact you through your preferred method (with the other channel as a back-up where you gave both) during business hours — necessary to perform the action you requested.
• To prepare a written scope and fee quotation where one is requested, and to perform any engagement you agree to — necessary for the conclusion and performance of a contract.
• To meet record-keeping and professional obligations that apply to an advisory engagement — necessary for compliance with a legal obligation.
• To keep the website working and secure — necessary for the legitimate interests of operating the service, balanced against your rights.

Where you opt in to occasional tax update summaries, we process that on the basis of your consent, which you may withdraw at any time (see section 11).

Your information is received by Tax Relief SA (Pty) Ltd and is processed through the systems connected to this website. The categories of recipient are:

• Our enquiry and customer-relationship management (CRM) system, which receives and stores enquiry and contact data and supports our workflow.
• The linked calendar system used to book and manage discovery calls, which holds the booking details you enter.
• Google measurement tools (Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4), which receive only the limited, non-personal event data described in section 13, and only on the production site after you accept optional analytics.
• SARS and other authorities, only where you instruct us to act on your behalf in an engagement and the disclosure is necessary for that matter.

We do not sell your personal information. Where a specialist matter requires input outside our confirmed scope, we will tell you before any information is shared and share only what is necessary for that purpose. Our service providers act on our instructions to provide the service and are expected to keep personal information confidential and secure.

Some of the systems we use, including our CRM, calendar and Google measurement tools, are operated by providers whose processing may take place outside South Africa. Where personal information is transferred to a third party in another country, we rely on the safeguards recognised under section 72 of POPIA — for example, a country with an adequate level of protection, binding contractual obligations, or another lawful basis provided for by POPIA. We do not transfer personal information to a third party in another country unless an applicable safeguard under POPIA is in place. We do not claim that all data always remains within South Africa.

We retain personal information only for as long as is necessary to respond to your enquiry, perform any agreed engagement, and meet the legal, contractual and professional obligations that apply to our work — including preserving the records and evidence needed for an audit trail of an engagement. When the period for which the information is needed has ended, we delete, anonymise or archive it with restricted access. We do not keep personal information for longer than is justified by the purposes described in this policy, and we do not state fixed retention periods that we cannot substantiate against the actual obligations that apply. A blanket right to deletion does not apply where a legal or professional obligation requires us to keep records.

Subject to applicable law and to verifying your identity, you have the right to:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you and request access to it.
• Request correction or updating of information that is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.
• Object to the processing of your personal information in circumstances recognised by POPIA.
• Request the deletion of your personal information (often called the right to be forgotten), subject to the legal and professional record-keeping obligations that apply to an engagement.
• Withdraw any consent you have given — including marketing consent and optional analytics consent — at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in section 1. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request, and we will respond within a reasonable time.

We take reasonable steps to keep personal information accurate and current. You can help by providing correct details when you enquire and by telling us when something changes. During an engagement, the accuracy of the information you give us — including figures, dates and SARS correspondence — is your responsibility, and the outcome of any matter depends on those facts. See our website terms for your responsibilities in this respect.

Replying to your enquiry is not marketing. We contact you about your own enquiry or engagement as part of providing the service you requested. Separate from that, you may opt in to receive occasional regulatory tax update summaries from us. Marketing consent is never preselected, is separate from your assessment request, and you can opt out at any time by replying to a message, by using the unsubscribe option, or by contacting us. We do not use your personal information for direct marketing without the consent or other lawful basis required by POPIA.

This website uses only the storage the browser needs to function — for example, to remember your consent choice and to keep the site working between pages. These essential storage items do not require a separate choice and are not used to track you for advertising. We do not set advertising cookies, and advertising storage remains denied. You can clear stored data at any time through your browser settings.

Optional analytics is denied by default. On the production site only, after you accept, we load Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4 to measure aggregate usage. Analytics is limited to an allowlist of non-personal event data — such as page views and which section of the site a visitor used. We do not send personal data, taxpayer categories, raw search queries, referrer strings or form notes to analytics. Advertising storage remains denied, and we do not enable advanced ads features. You can withdraw analytics consent at any time from the footer “Privacy choices” link, and the tag will stop loading on future pages. On staging, preview and localhost, optional analytics never loads regardless of any stored choice.

We apply reasonable technical and organisational safeguards, in proportion to the personal information we hold and the agreed requirements of the processors we use. These include limiting access to people who need it, using the access controls of the systems we rely on, and acting on security concerns when they arise. We do not claim encryption at rest, backups, regulator-certified compliance, or specific provider contracts beyond what is actually in place. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your personal information against loss, misuse and unauthorised access.

The Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA) gives you the right to request access to records held by a private body in certain circumstances. To make a formal PAIA or POPIA access request, contact us using the details in section 1. We will guide you on the form of request and any applicable fees. Where a PAIA manual is published, we will reference it here; until then, requests are handled on the basis of PAIA and POPIA directly.

We may update this policy to keep it accurate as our practices or the law changes. The current version is always the one published on this page. Where a change materially affects how we use your personal information, we will draw attention to it. Continuing to use the website after a change indicates that you accept the updated policy. The formal terms of any engagement remain those set out in the written scope for that matter.

If you believe we have not handled your personal information in line with POPIA, you may complain to us first using the details in section 1. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa), the independent body responsible for overseeing POPIA and PAIA. Public contact details are available on the Information Regulator’s website at inforegulator.org.za. Submitting a complaint to the Information Regulator does not prevent you from using other remedies available to you.