Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

Account information. When you sign up, we collect your email address and password (stored as a secure hash, never in plain text).

Business and tax information. To generate and file tax forms, we collect information you provide about your business, including:

• Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
• RDO code, registered business name, trade name, and address
• Line of business (PSIC code) and registration type
• VAT status, income tax regime, and deduction method
• Barangay Micro Business Enterprise (BMBE) certification details, if applicable
• Income, sales, purchases, and other figures you enter to compute your tax due

Filing records. We store the tax forms you generate, the computed values behind them, and — for assisted filings — proof-of-filing documentation uploaded by our staff or by you.

Payment information. Payments are processed by our third-party payment processor, Xendit. We do not directly collect or store your full card, bank, or e-wallet credentials — Xendit handles that. We do receive and store confirmation that a payment was made, the amount, and the associated invoice/payment reference.

Usage and technical information. We may collect standard technical data (IP address, browser type, access timestamps) for security and troubleshooting purposes, including as part of rate-limiting protections against automated abuse of our login and signup systems.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information above to:

• Create and maintain your account
• Generate accurately computed BIR tax forms based on your business's registered regime
• Process payments for our service fees through Xendit
• Provide assisted filing services, where our staff acts on your authorization to prepare and submit filings on your behalf
• Send you service-related communications: deadline reminders, filing status updates, payment confirmations, and BMBE certificate renewal reminders
• Maintain records for your own recordkeeping and in case of a BIR audit
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, or unauthorized access to accounts
• Comply with our own legal and regulatory obligations

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

3. Sensitive Financial Data — Special Handling

Your TIN and related tax data are financial and identifying information that we treat with heightened care:

• TINs are encrypted at rest in our database.
• Access to your full TIN by our staff (for assisted filing purposes) is logged, including who accessed it and when.
• Uploaded files (filing confirmation screenshots and similar) are stored privately and are only accessible via short-lived, authenticated links — they are not publicly accessible.

4. Who Can See Your Information

• You always have access to your own account, business profiles, and filing history.
• Our staff (accountants), only for filings you have specifically purchased assisted filing service for, and only for filings assigned to them.
• Our administrators, for account management, customer support, dispute resolution, and oversight of assisted filings.
• Our service providers, strictly to the extent needed to operate buwis.ph:
  • Xendit — payment processing
  • Our hosting and database providers, and our file-storage provider — to run and store the application and your data
  • Our email provider — to send account and service-related emails
  We do not permit these providers to use your data for their own purposes.
• BIR, only when you use our assisted filing service, and only to the extent necessary for our staff to file your return on your behalf, under the authorization you provide at the time of purchase.
• Legal or regulatory authorities, if required by law, court order, or government request.

5. Data Retention

We retain your account information, business profiles, and filing records indefinitely, since BIR audits can occur years after a filing period. You may request deletion of your account as described in Section 7, subject to the limitations described there.

6. What We Do NOT Do

• We do not pay your BIR tax dues on your behalf. Amounts you pay us are service fees only; your tax due is a separate obligation you remit directly to BIR through BIR's own official channels.
• We do not use your financial or tax data for advertising or marketing profiling.
• We do not share your TIN or tax figures with any party outside those listed in Section 4.

7. Your Rights and Choices

Consistent with the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10173), you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data (e.g. updating your business profile)
• Object to certain processing of your data
• Request deletion of your personal data, subject to our legitimate need to retain filing records for legal, tax-audit, or accounting purposes — we may retain filing history even after account deletion where required by law or necessary to resolve a dispute
• Data portability, where applicable

To exercise any of these rights, contact support@buwis.ph.

8. Cookies and Tracking

We use the Meta Pixel on our homepage, login, signup, and Review & Pay pages to understand how visitors find us and to measure the effectiveness of our advertising. This may set cookies and share limited information (such as a hashed version of your email address, for confirmed purchases only) with Meta. It only loads after you accept the cookie banner shown on those pages — if you decline, no pixel or tracking cookie is set. We do not use tracking technologies anywhere else in the app, including the dashboard, filing editors, admin, and staff areas, where you manage your actual tax filings.

9. Security

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encryption of sensitive fields, private/authenticated file storage, and rate limiting on account access. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security of information transmitted to us.

10. Children's Privacy

buwis.ph is intended for use by individuals and businesses of legal age to enter into binding tax and financial obligations in the Philippines. We do not knowingly collect information from minors.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version on this page with a new "Last updated" date. Material changes will be communicated via email where appropriate.

12. Contact Us

For any questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or your personal data, contact us at support@buwis.ph.