Last Updated: 12/11/2024
1. Introduction
Welcome to Muse! We provide a Platform (the “Platform”) that encompasses a variety of online tax and financial wellness solutions to employers, individuals, and small businesses, including CheckBoost, Muse Score, and Muse Compass.
We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your data in an open and transparent manner. This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy” sets forth how Muse Tax Inc. (“Muse,” “our,” “us,” or “we”) collects, uses, processes, and discloses your personal information when you access or use our Platform, our website, www.musetax.com (the “Site”), and any associated services and related technologies, features, programs and partnerships which we offer in connection with the Platform for which another privacy policy does not govern (collectively, “Services”), as well as the choices you can make about the way your personal information is collected, used, and shared in connection with our Services. It does not cover the privacy practices of third parties that we do not own or control.
When you use, access or interact with our Services, you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and consenting to how we share and otherwise use information about you as described in this Privacy Policy. You also consent to receive notifications concerning your financial privacy from us electronically. Unless we link to a different policy or state otherwise, this Privacy Policy applies when you visit or use our Services.
2. Information We Collect
Muse collects and utilizes data to help our users optimize their tax withholdings effectively. The data we collect includes employee payroll information such as gross wages, tax withholdings, and pay frequencies, which are essential for precise tax calculations. Our Platform also requires an employee's tax filing status, number of dependents, as these factors affect tax withholdings directly. Basic personal information like names and addresses are gathered to ensure the correct application of tax laws. We, our service providers, and our third-party non-affiliates receive and/or collect the following categories of personal identifying information (as described below, collectively, “Personal Information”):
a. Personal Information from you, the entity to which you provide services (your “Employer”), and any third-party non-affiliate to whom you provide the information used to provide our Services, including:
· your first and last name, address, email address, telephone number, and other contact details;
· proof of identity information, such as your passport or passport number or details, driver’s license or driver’s license number or details, national ID card, state ID card, or social security number;
· payroll information, such as gross wages, net pay, current and prior tax withholdings, elections and filings, pay frequencies, your tax filing status and number of dependents, tax ID number, timecard information, and other financial-related data necessary to provide our Services; and other financial-related data necessary to provide our Services; and
· employment details, such as your employment status, employer name, job title, and employee identification number.
b. Account Information: You may need to access our Platform and Services by setting up an account (a “Muse Account”) through establishing an account with other websites and services that are not websites or services that are controlled or operated by us (a “Connected Account”). We may need to verify your identity and collect information from you or your Connected Account to do so, including, but not limited to, information about your identity (e.g., name and email address) and user access credentials (e.g., a password and other multi-factor authentication credentials). Personal Information obtained from your Connected Account is information that you have chosen to make available to us as part of your use of your Connected Account, and is typically identified in the privacy policy of your Connected Account provider. You acknowledge the Connected Account is governed by the terms of use and privacy policy of that account provider.
We may send an email or text message to the email address or mobile phone number that you have designated in your Connected Account to instruct you on how to confirm your registration.
c. Your interactions with us, including:
· information you send us, such as your name, phone number, email address, or questions or other requests, whether by calling our customer service number, submitting an online form, emailing a Muse email address, text messaging a company number, or interacting with any chat function that we may make available on our Platform or Site; or
· feedback that you provide regarding our Services.
d. Technical information, including:
· log files and information your browser may send to us, including internet or network activity, such as general location or internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser types, browser versions, operating systems, service providers, our service pages that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers, and other diagnostic data; and
· user interface information on our Platform or Site, such as keystrokes, mouse clicks, page flips, and what you viewed.
e. Cookies: Our website and Services may utilize cookies and other tracking technologies so that we can provide the experiences you request, recognize your visit, track your interactions, and improve your and other users’ experiences. They also help us to provide or advertise our Services, and to enable, optimize, and analyze operation of our Services. A cookie is a small text file that may be used, for example, to collect information about website and Service activity, such as the URLs of our web pages that you visited, the URLs of the referring pages, and which pages you accessed. Most browsers allow you to control cookies, including whether or not to accept them and how to remove them. You may set most browsers to notify you if you receive a cookie, or you may choose to block cookies with your browser.
f. Data providers: We may obtain information about you, such as mailing address, gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, and information about your home and automobile from third-party data providers. We may use this information for marketing purposes and research purposes.
· Marketing. We may use this info to market our products and services to you.
· Research. We may use this info to provide aggregated, anonymized insights to third-party entities for the purpose of determining the impact of Services on user financial wellness.
3. Purposes
We collect and use Personal Information from you for the purposes of:
· delivering the Services, for example, in connection with preparing materials to enable you to optimize your tax withholdings to increase your net take-home pay;
· providing the benefits of our Site and our Platform; and
· as necessary, managing, running, improving, and developing our business and personalizing your experience while interacting with the Platform and our Services. This may include showing you personalized offers or recommendations based on your interests.
4. How We Use Your Information
If you submit Personal Information to us, or if we collect Personal Information from you, we may use it to:
· create, set up, manage and maintain your Muse Account;
· connect your Muse Account to a Connected Account;
· provide the Services to you;
· enhance and personalize your experience;
· improve, develop, market and promote our Services by conducting research and analyzing how our Services are used and interacted with, which may include training artificial intelligence and other machine learning models;
· combine and anonymize your Personal Information and data with data from our other users, customers and third parties to create aggregated data and statistics to improve, develop, market and promote our services;
· communicate with you to provide customer service and respond to your inquiries;
· send you essential information about changes to our Services, and provide you with news and updates;
tailor our content and improve our insights, including the way we match you and our users and customers to recommended offers, including those from third parties;
comply with legal and regulatory requirements;
respond to governmental requests and cooperate with law enforcement, if we believe such action is required or permitted by law;
enforce our Terms of Service, including investigating any potential violations and establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights;
· protect the safety, integrity, rights or security of our members, our Services or equipment, or any third party; and
· detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues related to our Services.
5. Sharing Your Information
We may share information about you, including Personal Information, with third parties in a variety of ways, such as:
· Service providers. We may sometimes share information about you with third-party companies, agents and individuals that facilitate our Services, provide Services on our behalf, perform services related to administration or the optimization of our Services, or assist us in analyzing how our Services are used. This may include designing or operating features, helping us research and test feature improvements, identifying offers or personalized recommendations, performing analytics and marketing our Services. These third parties are acting on our behalf so while they may have access to your information, they’re required to follow our instructions and meet the standards explained in our Privacy Policy when handling information about you that we provide them.
· When we collaborate with third parties to provide and improve our Services. We may sometimes share information about you with third parties we collaborate with in connection with providing or improving our Services. This can occur, for example, when we send your information to your Employer to update your income tax elections. Other examples include when we’re providing an integrated or co-branded feature with a partner or doing a joint research project with another organization to help improve our Services. We may also share information like the feedback you submit to us if it relates to both our Services and a partner’s products. When we share information with third-party collaborators, our collaborators may also use the information in connection with their own activities to the extent allowed under their own privacy practices (e.g., respond to your feedback, conduct additional research, or improve a feature of theirs).
· Our partners when you ask for their services. We may also give you opportunities to interact with third-party partners through our Services, such as when we provide you with the opportunity to review and send your personal information to a partner in order to pre-populate your application on the partner’s site, when we send your personal information to partners in order to generate offers for you to review, when we send your application information directly to our partners, or when we send you to the partner’s site for you to provide the information directly to them. In some cases, if you click through to go to a partner’s site, you will automatically be sending your personal information to that partner. When this happens, you will still have to submit your application on the partner’s site. Remember that any information you provide to the partner, whether through us or on your own, will be subject to their privacy practices and terms and conditions.
· When you publicly post the information. As part of our Services, we may provide opportunities for you to publicly post reviews, questions, comments, suggestions or other content, which may include Personal Information and portions of your Muse Account designated as public profile information, like your name or username. Anything you share in a public forum is, obviously, public, so think carefully about what you decide to share. You should also read our Community Rules for more information on what is appropriate to post. If you would like us to remove Personal Information included in Community Content, contact us at info@musetax.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your Personal Information, but we will try to respond to let you know why.
· As Part of a Business Transfer or Corporate Change. We may disclose and transfer information about you to a third party as part of, or in preparation for, a change of control, restructuring, corporate change, or sale or transfer of assets. If such a business transfer results in a material change in the treatment of your Personal Information, you will be notified by e-mail (using the primary email address on your Muse Account) or by a prominent notice on our site.
· For Legal Reasons. We reserve the right to transfer or disclose information about you to third parties, such as law enforcement agencies, government requests, or the courts as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings or for certain legal purposes, and as permitted by law. (You can read more about these in the “How We Use the Information We Collect” section above.)
· To Prevent Fraud. We reserve the right to transfer or disclose information about you to third parties to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims, or other liability, and for required institutional risk controls.
· With Your Consent. There may also be other limited contexts in which we share specific types of personal information with your express consent.
We may also share with third parties de-identified or aggregated data we collect, such as de-identified salary or compensation information, de-identified demographic information, or information about the computer or device from which you access the Service. We share such information for a variety of purposes, including to analyze Service usage, develop shared services, and improve our own products and features.
6. Do Not Track
Some Internet browsers may be configured to send “Do Not Track” signals to the online services that you visit. We currently do not respond to “Do Not Track” or similar signals. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” please visit www.allaboutdnt.com.
7. Links to and Interaction with Third-Party Products or Services
Our Services may enable you to interact with or contain links to your Connected Accounts and other third-party websites, mobile software applications and services that are not owned or controlled by us. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these third parties. Please be aware that the third parties may collect personal information from you. Accordingly, we encourage you to read the terms and conditions and privacy policy of each third party with you choose to engage or interact with.
8. Security
The security of personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards, including the use of appropriate administrative, physical and technical safeguards, to protect the personal information submitted to us. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security or confidentiality.
9. Record Retention/Deletion
We retain Personal Information as long as reasonably necessary to achieve the collection and use purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy. The criteria determining retention periods are based on legal obligations and information sensitivity, security, product research and development, technical functionality, and experience improvement considerations. Muse may also retain information not formatted for targeted disposal. We specifically retain Personal Information to respond to or comply with court orders, subpoenas, or regulator inquiries; as required by applicable state and federal law or regulation; in response to or in anticipation of litigation; and for other legitimate business purposes.
10. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy and posting it on the Services. If required by law, we will also provide notification of changes in another way that we believe is reasonably likely to reach you, such as via email or another manner through the Services. Any modifications to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon our posting the modified version (or as otherwise indicated at the time of posting). Your continued use of the Services thereafter means that you accept those changes.
11. Contact Us
If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us at info@musetax.com, or by mail at 119 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011.