Privacy Policy.

Your privacy is important to us.

In this Privacy Policy, references to "H&R Block", "us", "we" or similar terms means H&R Block Canada, Inc. References to "H&R Block US" means our parent company, HRB Tax Group, Inc.

H&R Block was founded on principles of trust, integrity and the delivery of outstanding products and services. H&R Block is committed to customer satisfaction and maintaining our customer's privacy. This is accomplished by a range of business procedures and security safeguards to ensure that your personal information is kept confidential, safe, and secure and is used only in accordance with this Privacy Policy or as otherwise consented to by you.

H&R Block is committed to providing transparency to its customers with respect to its practices in handling your personal information. This Privacy Policy will help you better understand how we protect, collect, use, or disclose your personal information and your right to access and correct your information.

This Privacy Policy may be amended from time to time. The current version will always be available to you on our website at www.hrblock.ca.

Application of this policy.

This Privacy Policy applies to your personal information collected, used, or disclosed by H&R Block to provide you the products and services you requested. Consistent with applicable privacy laws, personal information means information about an identifiable individual.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to our collection, use or disclosure of:

  • publicly available information such as a person's name, address, telephone number and electronic address, when listed in a public directory; or
  • business contact information, including the name, title or business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization; or
  • personal information that is aggregated and cannot be associated with an identifiable individual; or
  • any other information that is not personal information or is specifically excluded by applicable privacy law.


Why H&R Block collects personal information from you.

We collect the following personal information from you or your legally authorized representatives, either directly or through persons or entities acting on our behalf to provide the products and services that you request from us.

  • personal information that you enter on an income tax form, including your name, address, social insurance number, and other identifying and contact information, in addition to your tax and financial information, and your e-mail address;
  • personal information that you enter or otherwise provide when you register or open an account, sign in, use a service, call us for support, or give us feedback;
  • information from applications, forms, surveys, and in connection with polls or contests, including your name, address and e-mail address;
  • information for billing and payment purposes, including credit or debit card information, such as card number and card expiration date; and
  • when you enable location-based services, collect Global Positioning System (GPS) location data and or motion data.

H&R Block limits the collection of personal information to what is necessary to fulfill the product and service purposes that you identified to us at the time of collection. The personal information that we collect from you necessarily depends on the product or services that you have requested and on legal and regulatory requirements.

H&R Block collects personal information about you so that we can effectively provide the services and products to you that you have requested (including completing and filing your income tax return and/or providing you with Instant Refund®, establish your identity, manage our operations, make our services more useful and intelligent, and comply with legal and regulatory requirements. And, if we need to use your personal information for any other purpose, we will identify that purpose to you.

We may also use your personal information to enable us to understand your needs and preferences and to communicate with you about your account status. We may also use your personal information to offer you H&R Block products and services that you may find useful. You may choose not to receive our marketing communications at any time. Please see the “What you can do to access and manage your personal information at H&R Block” section below.

Consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information.

In accordance with the law, H&R Block may obtain your express consent in writing (i.e., when we collect, use, or disclose sensitive personal information), through electronic means, or verbally. Your consent may also be implied by an action that you have taken (including subscribing to our services), but this will only be in circumstances that do not involve sensitive personal information.

You can always refuse or withdraw your consent to the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information. Doing so may, in some cases, mean that we will be unable to provide you with the product or service that you have requested. Please see the “What you can do to access and manage your personal information at H&R Block” section below.

Disclosure of personal information.

We do not disclose your personal information to third parties except: as described in this Privacy Policy, with your consent, or as permitted or required by law. Your personal information may be disclosed:

  • to outside suppliers employed or retained by us or by H&R Block US to perform certain services or functions on our behalf, including billing, processing of credit and debit card transactions, marketing, Instant Refund® processing, Pay With Refund processing, mailing and data processing, shredding and storage, and collection or research or analytics services. We select our outside suppliers carefully and insist that they have privacy and security standards that meet our strict requirements. We provide to these suppliers only the personal information required for them to perform the services or functions for which they have been engaged. We require them to retain any personal information in strictest confidence and we also restrict their use of your personal information to what is necessary to act on our behalf or to provide services at your request;
  • to H&R Block US or H&R Block Canada Financial Services, Inc. or their affiliates to deliver or provide a product or service that you have requested, including Instant Refund® and to offer you products and services which may be of interest to you (though you may of course choose not to receive these materials, as noted above);
  • to our franchisees, where you have requested services in an area serviced by an H&R Block franchise, and between our franchisees, when you have received services at one franchisee but later request services at a different franchisee; and
  • in the event we enter into or contemplate entering into a business transaction.

Please note that personal information disclosed to H&R Block US will be securely used or stored in the United States and will, in addition to Canadian laws, also be subject to the laws of the United States.

In some cases, outside suppliers that we retain to perform services or functions on our behalf may be located outside Quebec or Canada. Accordingly, personal information provided to these companies for storage or processing may be located outside Quebec or Canada, and may therefore, in addition to Canadian and Quebec-specific laws, also be subject to the laws of those countries. For additional information regarding HRB Block US’s privacy policies and practices, please visit online at https://www.hrblock.com/univer...

H&R Block’s commitment to protecting your personal information.

H&R Block protects personal information by security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information. We restrict internal physical and electronic access to personal information to those employees who need to access it in order to serve you. We also maintain policies and procedures designed to restrict access (by external parties) to your personal information in several ways. For both internal and external parties, access controls include programs and specifications for physical security, records retention and disposal, computer and communication security measures reflected in system design, password protection, data management practices, and other measures to restrict access to the information we hold in physical and electronic forms.

H&R Block only retains personal information only for as long as necessary or required for the purposes for which it was collected or as required by law. Personal information that is no longer required will be destroyed, erased or made anonymous.

H&R Block is responsible for personal information in its possession or control, and will take reasonable steps to protect personal information that has been transferred to a third party in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law. H&R Block uses contractual and other means to ensure that third parties provide a comparable level of protection of your personal information to that provided by H&R Block.

What you can do to access and manage your personal information at H&R Block.

You may, at any time, contact our Privacy Office to request access to your personal information, verify its accuracy, require correction or deletion, and other matters relating to management of your personal information.

The contact information is:

Privacy Office

H&R Block Canada, Inc.

2600, 700 – 2 Street SW Calgary, AB T2P 2W2

By phone: 1-800-HR-BLOCK

By e-mail: privacy@hrblock.ca

H&R Block’s Privacy Office will promptly respond to your message.

Accuracy of and access to your personal information.

It is important that the personal information we have about you is accurate, complete, and up to date. To this end, you are encouraged to inform us when there are any changes to your information.

H&R Block will provide you with access to your personal information except where we are prohibited by law from doing so or are permitted by law to restrict your access for legitimate reasons. We may charge you a fee as permitted by law to provide access to your information under some circumstances, but we will let you know in advance if there will be a charge for doing so.

Please note that we will not disclose your personal information to you over the phone or via e-mail. Instead, we will make other arrangements for you to access your personal information.

In addition, as noted above, you can refuse to provide personal information to us and you may also at any time, on reasonable notice to us, in person or via telephone or e-mail, withdraw your consent to the collection, use or disclosure of any of your personal information, unless it is required to provide you with the services you have requested or to provide you with necessary information relating to your accounts with us or as required by law.

Managing electronic communications from H&R Block.

H&R Block will honour your choices when it comes to receiving electronic communications from us. Your communication preferences will be changed within 10 business days with no charge to you.

You have the following choices for managing your electronic communication preferences:

  • You can change your marketing preferences by sending your request via e-mail, including the contact information to which you no longer wish to receive communications and the details of which types of communications you no longer wish to receive, to unsubscribe@hrblock.ca;
  • To unsubscribe from all marketing materials click the unsubscribe link in the e-mail or newsletter you received;
  • Contact us at 1-800-HRBLOCK or at unsubscribe@hrblock.ca to provide us with details of which communications you wish to opt-out of;
  • Subject to your control, our mobile application may send push notifications to your mobile device. If you are receiving push notifications and no longer wish to receive these types of communications, you may turn them off at the device level.

Remember that even if you choose not to receive marketing communications from us, we will continue to send you mandatory service or transactional communications.

Cookies and other tracking technologies.

In addition, we, or our third-party advertisers, may collect information online through the use of "cookies", web beacons and other technologies. These technologies are small pieces of information/text sent by a web server to be stored on a user's web browser so it can later be read back from that browser on subsequent visits to a website. We use these technologies to store visitors' preferences, understand how you navigate through and process content on our website, and to record session information which allows us to customize our website for you as you visit various components of www.hrblock.ca. Through the use of cookies, we can display items that may be of interest to you, or make it easier for you to access your account information.

We do not link the information we store in web technologies to any personal information you provide while on our site. You may be able to configure your browser to accept or reject all or some cookies, or to notify you when a cookie is set, however, cookies must be enabled in order to access most functions on the site. Since each browser is different, please check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your web technology preferences.

Our website may include third party-delivered advertisements or links to third-party websites. These third-party websites may serve ads that assign different web technologies to you. Those web technologies may be used to track your involvement with the advertising site. You may choose not to accept these web technologies. We do not control these third parties or their use of website technologies, and you should review their privacy policies to learn more about whether they collect and use your personal information in connection with the information their web technologies gather from you, including what, why and how they collect and use your personal information.

You may also opt-out of network advertising programs that track your activities across multiple websites to deliver personalized advertising content to you. You will still receive other types of advertising; however, it will not be based on your interests. Deleting browser cookies and web beacons can remove your opt-out preferences, so you should use these tools periodically to ensure that your preferences are up-to-date.

Accountability.

H&R Block is accountable and committed to compliance with this Privacy Policy. H&R Block’s Privacy Officer is accountable for overseeing compliance with this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, our practices, or have a complaint or concern, please contact our Privacy Office via the contact information provided in this Policy.

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