Privacy Policy

AskOnward (the “Service”) is operated by Smart I.T Solutions Inc.(“we”, “us”, “our”), a corporation organized under the laws of the Republic of the Philippines. For any privacy related concern, you may reach our Data Protection Officer at sales@sitsolutionsinc.com.

AskOnward is an AI assistant that helps users understand the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) rulebook. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representing the BIR or any government agency.

We collect only what we need to run the Service.

Account information. When you sign in, we receive your email address and, if you provide it, your full name. This is stored through our authentication provider (Supabase) and used to identify your account.

Chat content. The questions you submit and the answers we return are processed in order to provide the Service. We may retain them in our database to maintain your session history, to improve answer quality, and to investigate abuse.

Payment information. Payments are processed by PayMongo Philippines, Inc.. When you pay for paid access, you provide payment details directly to PayMongo. We do not see or store your full card number, CVV, or e wallet credentials. We receive only a transaction reference, the amount, the status of the payment, and the email associated with the transaction.

Usage and device data. Like most web services, we automatically receive technical information such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, referring page, and the dates and times of your visits. This is used for security, debugging, and basic analytics.

Cookies and local storage. We use a small number of first party cookies and browser local storage entries that are strictly necessary to keep you signed in and to remember your theme preference. We do not use third party advertising cookies.

We use the information described above to:

• provide, operate, and maintain the Service;
• generate answers to your questions using a large language model grounded in the BIR rulebook;
• verify access entitlements such as your paid status and protect against unauthorized use;
• process payments, issue receipts, and comply with related tax and accounting obligations;
• communicate with you about your account, billing, security, and service updates;
• improve answer quality, model prompts, and product performance; and
• comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and our legal obligations.

We process personal data under one or more of the following lawful criteria recognized by the Data Privacy Act:

• Consent, which you provide by creating an account and using the Service;
• Contractual necessity, in order to deliver the features you have asked for, including paid access;
• Legitimate interests, for security, abuse prevention, and product improvement, in a manner that does not override your fundamental rights; and
• Legal obligation, where processing is required by Philippine law.

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the following categories of recipients, and only to the extent necessary:

• Supabase, our database and authentication provider, which stores your account record and chat history;
• Vercel, our hosting and AI Gateway provider, which serves the application and routes prompts to the underlying language model;
• PayMongo, our payment processor, for handling payments and issuing refunds;
• Professional advisors such as auditors and lawyers, under duties of confidentiality; and
• Government authorities, where disclosure is required by a valid subpoena, court order, or similar legal process.

Some of these providers may process data outside the Philippines. When this happens, we rely on contractual safeguards consistent with the Data Privacy Act and its Implementing Rules and Regulations.

We keep your information only for as long as we need it. Account records are retained while your account is active. Chat history is retained to give you continuity across sessions and may be removed at your request. Payment records are retained for the period required by tax and accounting regulations, typically ten (10) years from the date of the transaction. Logs used for security and debugging are kept for a short rolling window and then deleted.

As a data subject under the Data Privacy Act of 2012, you have the right to:

• be informed about how your personal data is processed;
• access the personal data we hold about you;
• object to processing, including for direct marketing, where applicable;
• request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data;
• request the erasure or blocking of your personal data when there is a lawful basis;
• request portability of your data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable format;
• withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing; and
• be indemnified for damages sustained due to inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, false, unlawfully obtained, or unauthorized use of your personal data.

To exercise any of these rights, send a written request to sales@sitsolutionsinc.com. We may need to verify your identity before acting on the request.

We use industry standard technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit (TLS), access controls, and least privilege administrative access. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we treat any suspected incident seriously and will notify you and the National Privacy Commission as required by law.

AskOnward is not directed to children under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Answers are generated by a large language model and grounded in the publicly available BIR rulebook. The model can be wrong. Answers are not legal, tax, or accounting advice. Always verify critical requirements with the BIR or a qualified professional. Do not submit confidential information about other people that you are not authorized to share.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, notify you by email or through the Service before the change takes effect.

Smart I.T Solutions Inc.
Email: sales@sitsolutionsinc.com

See also our Terms of Service.