Privacy Policy

The Privacy Policy below governs your Avalara account and any information you provide on this site. If you request service from Avalara, you authorize Avalara and 3rd Party Banking institutions to exchange the information you provide in the application form. If you are approved for Avalara service your account will be governed by the Avalara Privacy Policy.

A. Overview
In order to operate the Avalara service and to reduce the risk of fraud, Avalara ("Avalara" or "we") must ask you to provide us information about yourself and your credit card and/or bank account. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect and how we use that information. Avalara takes the privacy of your personal information very seriously and will use your information only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information or a list of our customers to third parties. However, as described in more detail in Part C below, there are limited circumstances in which some of your information will be shared with third parties, under strict restrictions, so it is important for you to review this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to all services that are hosted on the Avalara.com and Avalara.net Web site, whether the services are offered by Avalara, by its subsidiaries, or by the Avalara 3rd Party Banking institutions.

In order to enhance the protection of your privacy and our compliance with this Privacy Policy, Avalara has agreed to disclose our information practices and to have our practices reviewed.

Avalara has agreed to notify you of:

1. What personally identifiable information is collected.
2. The organization collecting the information.
3. How the information is used.
4. With whom the information may be shared.
5. What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information.
6. The kind of security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under Avalara's control.
7. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, contact Avalara (contact us).

By accepting the Privacy Policy and User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal and company information in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to the terms of the Avalara User Agreement. This Privacy Policy will take effect on Nov. 20, 2004. This Privacy Policy was last updated on Nov. 20, 2004.

Please note that your personal information will be stored and processed on our computers in the United States. The laws on holding personal data in the United States may be less stringent than the laws of your country but Avalara will hold and transmit your personal or company information in a safe, confidential and secure environment. If you object to your personal or company information being transferred or used as described in this Privacy Policy, please do not register for the Avalara service.

Notification of Changes
This policy may be revised over time as new features are added to the Avalara service or as we incorporate suggestions from our customers. If we are going to use or disclose your personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time we collected the information, you will have a choice as to whether or not we use or disclose your information in this new manner. Any material changes will be effective only after we provide you by e-mail with at least 30 days' notice of the amended Privacy Policy (if you have closed your Avalara account, you will not be contacted to notify you of the amended Policy and your personal information will not be used or disclosed in this new manner).

We will post the amended Privacy Policy prominently on our Web site so that you can always review what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. Please check the Avalara Web site at www.avalara.com at any time for the most current version of our Privacy Policy.

Avalara UserCenter and other pages on the Avalara Web site include links to third party Web sites. These sites are governed by their own privacy statements, and Avalara is not responsible for their operations, including but not limited to their information practices. Users submitting information to or through these third party Web sites should review the privacy statement of these sites before providing them with personally identifiable information.

A Special Note About Children. Children are not eligible to use our service and we ask that minors (under the age of 18) do not submit any personal information to us or use the service.

B. Information We Collect

Required Information
To open an Avalara account, you must provide your Company name, contact name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. In order to make payments through Avalara, you must provide credit card, debit card or bank account information. This required information is necessary for us to process transactions, issue a new password if you forget or lose your password, protect you against credit card fraud and checking account fraud, and to contact you should the need arise in administering your account.

Transaction Information
When you use Avalara to provide sales and use tax collection and disbursement to the taxing jurisdictions, we ask you to provide information related to each transaction, including the amount of the transaction and the type of transaction. We retain this information for each of your transactions through Avalara. We also collect the Internet address (IP address) of the computer or device you use to access your Avalara account, in order to help detect possible instances of unauthorized transactions.

Information About You From Third Parties
In order to protect all our customers against potential fraud, we verify with third parties the information you provide. In the course of such verification, we receive personally identifiable information about you from such services. In particular, if you register a credit card or debit card with Avalara, we will use card authorization and fraud screening services to verify that your card information and address matches the information that you supplied to Avalara, and that the card has not been reported as lost or stolen.

If you register your business with Avalara or if you send or receive payment through Avalara, in some circumstances we will conduct a background check on your business by obtaining information about you and your business from a credit bureau or a business information service such as Dun & Bradstreet. If you incur a debt to Avalara, we will generally conduct a credit check on you by obtaining additional information about you from a credit bureau, to the extent permitted by law. Avalara, at its sole discretion, also reserves the right periodically to retrieve and review a business and / or consumer credit report for any account, and reserves the right to close an account based on information obtained during this credit review process.

Additional Verification
If we cannot verify the information that you provide, or if you request a withdrawal by check to an address other than your verified billing address, we ask you to send us additional information by fax (such as your tax ID#, credit card statement, and/or other information linking you or the company to the applicable address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your information.

Web Site Traffic Information
Because of the way that World Wide Web communication standards work, when you arrive at or leave the Avalara Web site, we automatically receive the Web address of the site that you came from or are going to. We also collect information on which pages of our Web site you visit while you are on the Avalara site, the type of browser you use and the times you access our Web site. We use this information only to try to understand our customers' preferences better and to manage the load on our servers, so as to improve our service and your experience with Avalara.

Our Use of "Cookies"
"Cookies" are small files of data that reside on your computer and allow us to recognize you as an Avalara customer if you return to the Avalara site using the same computer and browser. We send a "session cookie" to your computer if and when you log in to your Avalara account by entering your e-mail address and password. These cookies allow us to recognize you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session, so that you do not need to re-enter your password multiple times. Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect.

We also use longer-lasting cookies to display your e-mail address on our sign-in form, so that you don't have to retype the e-mail address each time when you log in to your Avalara account. Our cookie files are encoded so that your e-mail address and other information can only be interpreted by Avalara. We may, however, share cookie information regarding whether or not a certain user is already registered with Avalara with certain merchants with whom we have an official co-marketing relationship.

Customer Service Correspondence
If you send us correspondence, including e-mails and faxes, we retain such information in the records of your account. We will also retain customer service correspondence and other correspondence from Avalara to you. We retain these records in order to measure and improve our customer service, and to investigate potential fraud and violations of our User Agreement. We may, over time, delete these records if permitted by law.

Questionnaires, Surveys and Profile Data
From time to time, we offer optional questionnaires and surveys to our users for such purposes as collecting demographic information or assessing users' interests and needs. The use of the information collected will be explained in detail in the survey itself. If we collect personally identifiable information from our users in these questionnaires and surveys, the users will be given notice of how the information will be used prior to their participation in the survey or questionnaire.

C. Our Use and Disclosure of Information

Internal Uses
We collect, store and process your personal information on servers located in the United States. We use the information we collect about you in order 1) to provide our services and process your transactions, 2) to provide customer service, 3) to determine your eligibility to receive offers for special features or products, and 4) to improve our products and services.

We give access to individually identifiable information about our users only to those employees who require it to fulfill customer service requests.

Disclosure to Third Parties
Avalara will not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information or Corporate information to third parties. Avalara will not share any of your personally identifiable or Corporate information with third parties except in the limited circumstances described below, or with your express permission (and with other Avalara customers as described above). These third parties are limited by law or by contract from using the information for secondary purposes beyond the purposes for which the information is shared.

1. We share information with companies that help us process the transactions you request and protect our customers' transactions from fraud, such as sharing your credit card number with a service that screens for lost and stolen card numbers. See "Information About You From Third Parties" in Section B above. Additionally, if you go into a negative balance and owe us money, we may share information with processing companies including collection agencies.

2. We may disclose the information we collect, as described in Section B above, to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf. We may also disclose the information we collect to other financial institutions with whom we have joint agreements. These companies are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit using the information except to provide the service or processing the specified Avalara-related products or services, unless you have affirmatively agreed or given your prior permission for other uses.

3. We disclose information that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity, or to conduct investigations of violations of our User Agreement. For example, this means that if we conduct a fraud investigation and conclude that one side has engaged in deceptive practices, we can give that person or entity's contact information (but not bank account or credit card information) to victims who request it.

4. We disclose information in response to a subpoena, warrant, court order, levy, attachment, order of a court-appointed receiver or other comparable legal process, including subpoenas from private parties in a civil action.

5. When a Partner signs up for a co-branded version of Avalara's Tool Kit through links to Avalara from our co-branded partner's website, Avalara will share with the co-branded partner that user's name, e-mail address and physical address in order to provide enhanced integration between Avalara's services and the services of our co-branded partner.

6. We disclose information to your agent or legal representative (such as the holder of a power of attorney that you grant, or a guardian appointed for you).

7. We share aggregated statistical data with our business partners or for public relations. For example, we may disclose that a specific percentage of our users live in California. However, this aggregated information is not tied to personally identifiable information.

8. As with any other business, it is possible that Avalara in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by Avalara, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended as described in Section A above.

9. We will share your information with a parent, subsidiaries and joint ventures to help coordinate the services we provide to you, enforce our terms and conditions, and promote trust and safety.

10.  In accordance with SST Regulations, as outlined in Section 321 of the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement.

Our Contacts with Avalara Customers
We communicate with users on a regular basis via e-mail to provide requested services, and we also communicate by phone to resolve customer complaints or investigate suspicious activities. We use your e-mail address to confirm your opening of an Avalara account, to send information about important changes to our products and services, and to send notices and other disclosures required by law. Generally, users cannot opt out of these communications, but they will be primarily informational in nature rather than promotional.

We also use your e-mail address to send you other types of communications that you can control, including newsletters, network status, customer surveys and notice of special third-party promotions. You can choose whether to receive some, all or none of these communications when you complete the registration process, or at any time thereafter, by logging in to your account on the Avalara Web site and changing your preferences in the Profile page of the UserCenter tab. You can also change your choices at any time through the same procedure.

In connection with independent audits of our financial statements and operations, the auditors may seek to contact a sample of our customers to confirm that our records are accurate. However, these auditors cannot use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

Internet Address Information
We use IP addresses, browser types and access times to analyze trends, administer the site, improve site performance and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.

D. Information Security

Information Security
Avalara is committed to handling your customer information with high standards of information security. Your credit card and bank account information are stored only in encrypted form on computers. We restrict access to your personally identifiable information to employees and 3rd party banking institutions that have a need to know that information in order to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information. We test our security systems regularly and also contract with outside companies to audit our security systems and processes. For more information on Avalara's security practices, please email us for a copy of the Avalara Security Policy.

The security of your Avalara account also relies on your protection of your Avalara password. You may not share your Avalara password with anyone. Avalara will never ask you to send your password or other sensitive information to us in an e-mail, though we may ask you to enter this type of information on the Avalara website, which will always have a secure encrypted URL beginning with https://www.avalara.com/, or https://www.avalara.net.

Any e-mail or other communication requesting your password, asking you to provide sensitive account information via email, or linking to a website with a URL that does not begin with https://www.avalara.com/ should be treated as unauthorized and suspicious and should be reported to Avalara immediately.  If you do share your Avalara password with a third party for any reason, including because the third party has promised to provide you additional services such as account aggregation, the third party will have access to your account and your personal information, and you may be responsible for actions taken using your password. If you believe someone else has obtained access to your password, please change it immediately by logging in to your account and changing your Profile settings, and also contact us right away as described in Section F below.

E. Accessing and Changing Your Information
You can review the personal information you provided us and make any desired changes to such information, or to the settings for your Avalara account, at any time by logging in to your account on the Avalara Web site and changing your preferences in the Profile page of the "UserCenter" tab. You can also close your account through the Avalara Web site. If you close your Avalara account, we will mark your account in our database as "Closed," but will keep your account information in our database. This is necessary in order to deter fraud, by ensuring that persons who try to commit fraud will not be able to avoid detection simply by closing their account and opening a new account. However, if you close your account, your personally or company identifiable information will not be used by us for any further purposes, nor sold or shared with third parties, except as necessary to prevent fraud and assist law enforcement, or as required by law.

F. Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, Avalara's information practices, or your dealings with Avalara, you can contact us, call 877-780-4848 Monday through Friday between the hours of 8am and 5pm PST, or write us at Avalara, 435 Ericksen Ave. #250, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110.