Terms of use

What this is, and what it is not

We are a software provider. We are not your accountant, your tax adviser, or your agent. We do not act for you, we do not represent you before HMRC, and no relationship of adviser and client arises between us.

MakingTaxEazy helps you keep bookkeeping records and prepare information for UK tax purposes, including quarterly updates and returns sent to HMRC through their APIs. It applies rules to the information you give it and shows you the result.

It does not give tax advice. It cannot know your full circumstances and it does not tell you what you ought to do. Where your affairs are not straightforward, take advice from a qualified adviser.

Any calculation the software shows is our computation from your figures. Where a calculation comes from HMRC’s own systems we say so. Our summary of a tax calculation is not HMRC’s SA302 and is labelled accordingly.

Who can use it

You must be at least 18 and able to enter into a contract. The software is for UK tax purposes and is not designed for tax obligations in any other jurisdiction.

Accounts are created by us; there is no public registration. You must keep your password and your second factor secure, and tell us promptly if you believe someone else has access. Two-step verification is required. If you lose your authenticator you can use a recovery code, which removes the lost factor and asks you to set up a new one.

What is sent to HMRC, and when

It is worth being exact about this, because “nothing is sent until you press submit” would not be true.

Throughout preparation, the software communicates with HMRC on your behalf: reading your filing obligations, your business details, income HMRC already hold, and asking HMRC to produce a calculation from what has been submitted. These exchanges are part of preparing a return and happen as you use the product.

Anything that files, amends or finalises your tax position — a quarterly update, a final declaration — is sent only when you instruct it, after you have been shown what will be sent. A final declaration cannot be undone once made.

Every call we make to HMRC also carries the fraud prevention headers they require of all software connecting to their systems. The privacy policy sets out what those contain.

You submit; we do not

Every submission to HMRC is made by you, on your instruction, and is your submission.

You remain responsible for reviewing and approving the figures before they are submitted, for the accuracy and completeness of what you enter, import or connect, and for submitting on time. HMRC hold the taxpayer responsible for what is filed, and so do these terms. If a figure is wrong because the information behind it was wrong, incomplete or miscategorised, that is your return and your responsibility.

Automated suggestions and AI

The software categorises transactions and reconciles records automatically. Today that is rule-based; we intend to introduce AI-assisted categorisation and reconciliation.

In both cases the output is a suggestion. It is proposed for you to accept, change or reject, and it does not become a figure in a return until a person approves it. There is no automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects, and you should not treat an automated suggestion as advice or as a substitute for your own judgement.

Automated suggestions can be wrong, and will be wrong more often on unusual transactions than on ordinary ones. Reviewing them is your responsibility, not a formality. Where we introduce AI processing we will update the privacy policy and tell account holders before it happens.

If you act for clients

Where you use the software for someone else — as an accountant, bookkeeper or agent — you confirm on each occasion that:

• you are authorised by that client to act for them, to hold their records, and to prepare and submit information to HMRC on their behalf;
• you hold whatever authorisation HMRC separately require for an agent to act, and you will tell us if it is withdrawn;
• you are the controllerof that client’s personal data and we are your processor, acting only on your instructions and for no purpose of our own;
• you have given that client the information data protection law requires — including that their records are held in this software — and you have a lawful basis for putting their data here;
• you will deal with any request that client makes about their own data, and we will assist you in answering it.

You are responsible for what the people in your firm do with the accounts you give them. If a client’s data is in the product without authority, that is your act and not ours, and you will tell us promptly so it can be removed.

Where a separate written data processing agreement is in place between us, it takes precedence over this section.

Your data, and your statutory records

You keep ownership of everything you put in. How we handle it is set out in our privacy policy, which forms part of these terms and which you should read alongside them. It explains what we hold, our legal basis for holding it, who else sees it, how long we keep it, and your rights over it.

This software is not a substitute for keeping your statutory records. UK law requires you to keep the underlying records — bank statements, invoices, receipts, contracts — for the periods it prescribes, and to be able to produce them to HMRC. Data held in this product does not discharge that duty, and you should keep your own copies independently of it. Do not rely on us as your only record of anything.

Third-party services

The software connects to services we do not own or control.

HMRC.Submissions, obligations and calculations depend entirely on HMRC’s APIs. Their availability, their rules and their responses are theirs, not ours. Your relationship with HMRC as a taxpayer is between you and them; we are not a party to it and cannot resolve a dispute with them on your behalf.

Xero, and other record providers.If you connect an account, you authorise us to read the records you ask us to import, using the access that provider grants. You remain bound by that provider’s own terms. We are not responsible for the accuracy or completeness of data they supply, for changes they make to their service, or for their withdrawing access. You may disconnect at any time.

Where a third-party service fails, changes, rejects a request or withdraws access, we are not liable for the consequences, though we will tell you what we know.

Payment

The software is currently provided without charge. There is no subscription, no fee, and no payment details are held.

We intend to introduce paid subscriptions. If we do, we will publish the prices and the payment terms, and we will give account holders notice before any charge applies to them. Nothing in these terms obliges you to pay anything you have not separately agreed to, and no charge will be made without your express agreement.

If a payment ever fails, we will not make your own records unreachable to you.

Acceptable use

Do not use the software to submit information you know to be false, to access an account that is not yours, to attempt to interfere with the service or its security, or to submit data for a taxpayer you have no authority to act for.

Development status

The software is in active development and is not a finished product. It is currently a private environment: access is by invitation, there is no public registration, and features may be added, changed or removed without notice. Parts of it are new and have not yet been used at volume.

Treat it accordingly, and check every figure against your own records before you approve it.

Availability

We do not promise uninterrupted availability. The software depends on services we do not control, including HMRC’s own systems, which have their own outages and maintenance windows. A filing deadline is not extended by an outage — leave time.

We may change, suspend or withdraw the service, or any part of it. Where we can give notice we will, and we will make an export of your data available before withdrawing access.

Events outside our control

We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by something beyond our reasonable control. That includes failure or unavailability of HMRC’s systems; failure of our hosting, database or network providers; internet or telecommunications failure; cyber attack; changes in law, regulation or HMRC’s technical requirements; industrial action; fire, flood or severe weather; epidemic; and acts of government or war.

Where such an event prevents us from providing the service, our obligations are suspended for as long as it continues. If it continues for more than 30 days, either of us may close your account.

Who owns the software

The software, the source code, the interface and its design, the MakingTaxEazy name and logo, the documentation, and everything else we have made are owned by Making Tax Eazy Ltd or licensed to us. Using the software transfers none of it.

You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the software for its purpose, for as long as your account is open. You may not copy, modify, translate, decompile or reverse engineer it, except to the limited extent the law says you may despite this; nor resell, sublicense, rent or otherwise make it available to anyone else; nor use it to build a competing product; nor remove or obscure any notice of ownership.

Your data stays yours. Nothing here gives us ownership of the records you enter, import or produce.

If you send us feedback or a suggestion, we may use it to improve the software without owing you anything for it. You are not obliged to send us any.

Liability

Nothing in these terms affects rights you have that cannot lawfully be excluded or restricted. In particular, we do not exclude or limit liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. Those exceptions are stated because a term attempting to exclude them would be unenforceable and could take the rest of this clause with it.

If you are a consumer — using the software wholly or mainly outside a business — you have statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including that a service is performed with reasonable care and skill. Nothing in these terms excludes or restricts those rights, and the limit below does not apply to the extent it would do so. If any part of this clause is unfair within the meaning of that Act, it does not bind you and the rest continues to apply.

Subject to the two paragraphs above, and to the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for:

• any penalty, interest, surcharge or additional tax, however it arises — including from a figure you approved, information you supplied, a return you submitted, or a deadline you missed;
• any error, omission or misclassification in the records you entered, imported or connected, or in an automated suggestion you accepted;
• any enquiry, assessment, determination or investigation by HMRC;
• any failure, outage, change or rejection on the part of HMRC or of any other service the software depends on;
• loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, goodwill or anticipated savings;
• loss or corruption of data, where you have not kept your own copies of the underlying records;
• any indirect or consequential loss.

If you are a business customer, the software is provided “as is”, all implied terms are excluded so far as the law allows, and our total liability for all claims, however arising, is limited to £100 while the software is provided without charge. If paid subscriptions are introduced, that limit will be restated in the terms that apply to them.

If any part of this clause is found to be unenforceable, the remainder continues to apply.

Suspension and ending it

You may stop using the software at any time and ask us to close your account.

We may suspend or close an account, or restrict access to part of the service, where:

• these terms are breached;
• we suspect fraud, or an attempt to submit information known to be false to HMRC;
• there is a security risk — an account appears compromised, credentials have been shared, or someone is attempting to reach data that is not theirs;
• we are required to by law, by a court, by a regulator, or by HMRC;
• a third-party service is being abusedthrough the software, including HMRC’s APIs, Xero, or our own infrastructure — for example excessive automated requests, or use that puts our access to those services at risk;
• an account is used for a taxpayer the user has no authority to act for.

Where the risk allows it we will warn you first and give you a chance to put it right. Where it does not — suspected fraud, an active security problem, or a legal requirement — we may act immediately and tell you afterwards. We will always give the reason unless prevented by law.

Suspension is not a penalty and we will lift it once the reason has gone. On closure you may ask for an export of your data before it is deleted in line with the retention periods in the privacy policy.

Changes, and the law that applies

We may change these terms; the date at the top will change and we will tell account holders where the change is significant. Continuing to use the software after that is acceptance.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the UK, you may bring proceedings in your own jurisdiction.

Questions about these terms: azhar@makingtaxeazy.co.uk.