Terms and Conditions

Capitalised terms used in these Terms have the meanings assigned below or, where defined in our Privacy Policy, the meanings assigned there.

Account

The user record created by you on the Service, identified by your email address and any subsequent recovery factors.

CA / Chartered Accountant

A Chartered Accountant in good standing on the Register of Members maintained by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India under Section 19 of the Chartered Accountants Act 1949. Where this term is used in connection with a filing, the Chartered Accountant is an independent professional retained by the Company on a contract basis to review the specific filing; no person within the Company holds a Certificate of Practice issued under that Act, and no representation is made that the Company itself is, or operates as, a firm of Chartered Accountants.

Content

Any text, data, image, document, computation result, attachment, comment, or other material that you, the Company, or a CA submits or generates through the Service.

Fees

The amounts payable for use of paid features of the Service, as published on the pricing page or, for enterprise customers, as agreed in a written purchase order or master-services agreement.

ITR

An Income Tax Return prescribed under Section 139 of the Income-tax Act 1961.

Service

The ElevateFinance platform as defined in our Privacy Policy.

Terms

These Terms and Conditions, including any schedules, appendices, or successor versions adopted in line with Section 19.

we / us / our / the Company

ElevateFinance, a sole proprietorship registered as a Micro Enterprise under the Udyam Registration framework, having its registered office at Pune, Maharashtra 411058, India, and acting through its sole proprietor Priyesh Mishra.

you / your / the User

The natural person or, in the case of an enterprise account, the legal entity that accesses or uses the Service.

References to a statute are references to that statute as in force on the date a particular obligation falls due, including the Rules, Notifications, and Circulars issued under it. Headings are for convenience and do not affect interpretation. The singular includes the plural and references to one gender include all genders.

These Terms form a legally binding contract between you and the Company within the meaning of Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act 1872. By creating an Account, by accessing the Service, or by paying for any feature, you represent and warrant that (a) you are at least eighteen years of age, (b) you have full capacity to enter into this contract under Indian law, (c) you are using the Service either for yourself or for an entity on whose behalf you are duly authorised to act, (d) the information you provide is true, accurate, and complete to the best of your knowledge, and (e) you are not the subject of any sanction, restriction, or court order that prohibits you from contracting with the Company.

The Service is software. It computes Indian tax law from inputs you provide and produces machine-readable artefacts that the Income Tax Department accepts as a return. By default the Service operates in software-only mode and you remain the filer of record. Where, in addition, you elect the optional, paid CA-review feature for a particular filing, the Service routes that filing to an independent Chartered Accountant retained by the Company on a contract basis for professional review before you sign and upload the return through the Income Tax Department portal. CA review is governed by the additional disclosures shown at the moment of purchase and is not engaged unless you elect it. The Service:

• does not provide tax planning, investment advice, legal opinion, audit certification, or representation in proceedings before any authority;
• does not constitute "professional services" rendered by a CA within the meaning of Section 2(2) of the Chartered Accountants Act 1949, save and except where such services are rendered by an independent Chartered Accountant retained on a contract basis under the optional CA-review feature, in which case the Chartered Accountant's signature alone authenticates the professional services and the Company is the platform operator only;
• does not constitute "investment advice" within the meaning of Regulation 2(1)(l) of the SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations 2013;
• does not constitute "representation" within the meaning of Section 288 of the Income-tax Act 1961.

For the avoidance of doubt, where the Service generates a Return, you remain the filer of record under the Income-tax Act 1961, you sign the Return through the portal's e-Verify facility (Aadhaar OTP, Net Banking, DSC, or EVC), and the legal consequences of the Return rest with you.

You may use the Service if you are a Resident Indian, a Non-Resident Indian, or a Resident-but-Not-Ordinarily-Resident, in each case with sources of income that fall within the scope of the form types and Assessment Years supported by the Service at the relevant time. The form-type and Assessment-Year coverage is published in the Service and updated as the Central Board of Direct Taxes notifies new forms or amends existing ones. Where you are not eligible, the Service will reject your attempt to file and refund the Fee in line with Section 7.

You agree to:

• provide complete, accurate, and current information, including PAN, Aadhaar (or equivalent declaration where Aadhaar is not held), bank account particulars, and any income or deduction information that the Income-tax Act requires you to disclose;
• keep the credentials of your Account confidential, refrain from sharing them with any other person, and notify us promptly if you suspect compromise;
• review and confirm the computation results, the draft Return, and the supporting schedules before you authorise filing;
• disclose all sources of income, foreign assets, and crypto-asset transactions that the Income-tax Act, the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act 2015, the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002, or any other applicable statute requires you to disclose;
• comply with the Acceptable Use rules at Section 9.

You acknowledge that the Company processes Personal Data in accordance with the Privacy Policy and that you have read, understood, and accepted the Privacy Policy.

Fees are quoted in Indian Rupees and are exclusive of Goods and Services Tax (GST) unless expressly stated otherwise. GST is charged at the prevailing statutory rate applicable to information technology services under HSN/SAC 998314, currently eighteen percent. The current Fee schedule is published at the pricing page and may be amended in line with Section 19. Fees once paid are non-refundable except as provided in the Refund Policy. Payments are processed through Razorpay Software Private Limited, a Reserve Bank of India licensed Payment Aggregator. The Company does not collect or store full card numbers, CVV values, UPI PINs, or net banking credentials. Invoices are issued in line with Rule 46 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Rules 2017 and are accessible from your Account.

Refund eligibility, the timeline within which a refund must be requested, the non-refundable cases, and the procedure for chargeback handling are set out in our Refund Policy. The Refund Policy is incorporated by reference into these Terms. In the event of conflict between these Terms and the Refund Policy on any matter the Refund Policy expressly addresses, the Refund Policy prevails.

The Company is the owner of, or otherwise authorised to use, all intellectual property in the Service, including the source code, the computation engine, the database schemas, the user-interface designs, the trademarks, the logos, the brand names, the textual content (other than your Content), the documentation, the audit trail templates, and the cryptographic-receipt format. The Company grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Service for the lawful preparation and filing of your own ITR, for the term of the Account. No other licence is granted, expressly or by implication. You may not (a) copy, reproduce, modify, translate, or create derivative works from the Service in whole or in part except as the law expressly permits, (b) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to extract the source code of the Service, (c) circumvent any technical measure that protects the Service, including rate limits and access controls, (d) remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notice, (e) use the Service to build a competing product or to train any model whose output substitutes for the Service, or (f) use any robot, scraper, spider, or automated means to access the Service except for legitimate search-engine indexing of public marketing pages.

You agree that you will not, and will not permit any other person to:

• use the Service to file a Return on behalf of any other person without that person's express, informed authorisation in writing;
• submit information you know or reasonably ought to know is false, misleading, or calculated to evade tax in violation of the Income-tax Act 1961, the Black Money Act 2015, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002, or any other applicable statute;
• upload any file containing malware, executable code, or steganographic payload other than legitimate tax-supporting documents;
• harass, defame, threaten, intimidate, or abuse any other User of the Service or any CA empanelled on the Service;
• send, through the in-product messaging facility, any communication that contains Personally Identifiable Information beyond what the Service requires for the filing, any off-platform handoff request, any attempt to circumvent the platform's payment or assignment flow, or any communication directed at the sole proprietor's personal identity in a manner unrelated to the Service;
• interfere with or disrupt the integrity, performance, or operation of the Service, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to it or its related systems or networks;
• use the Service in a manner that infringes the intellectual property, privacy, or other rights of any third party.

The Company is an "intermediary" within the meaning of Section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act 2000 in relation to Content that flows through the Service from one User to another (for example messages between a customer and a CA), and avails of the safe-harbour at Section 79 of that Act on the basis that (a) the Company's function is limited to providing access to the Service, (b) the Company does not initiate the transmission, select the receiver, or modify the information, and (c) the Company observes the due-diligence requirements of Rule 3(1) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, including the publication of these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Grievance Redressal procedure, and the rules of acceptable use. Where Content is unlawful or in violation of these Terms, the Company will, on actual knowledge or on receipt of a notification by the appropriate Government or its agency, take down the Content within the timelines the Rules prescribe.

The Service is provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Company disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the Company does not warrant that:

• the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free from harmful components;
• the Income Tax Department will accept any particular Return on first transmission; transmission failures, portal downtime, and reconciliation mismatches at the Income Tax Department portal are outside the Company's control;
• the result computed by the Service is the only legally tenable result; differing interpretations of statute and judicial pronouncement may produce differing results, and you may seek a contrary professional opinion at any time;
• any third-party service the Service interoperates with (Razorpay, Resend, Neon, Cloudflare R2, Auth.js, Google) will itself be uninterrupted or error-free.

Subject only to the carve-outs in Section 13, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, the aggregate liability of the Company to you for any claim, whether in contract, tort, statute, equity, or otherwise, arising out of or in connection with the Service, shall not exceed the Fees you paid to the Company for the specific Assessment Year and Form Type to which the claim relates, and in any event shall not exceed Rupees Twenty-Five Thousand. The Company shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including loss of refund, loss of expected refund interest under Section 244A of the Income-tax Act 1961, loss of business, loss of goodwill, loss of opportunity, or any penalty, interest, or prosecution assessed against you by the Income Tax Department on account of any disclosure, omission, misstatement, or default attributable to you. The Company's liability for any decision the Income Tax Department, the Goods and Services Tax authorities, the Foreign Exchange Management Act authorities, the Enforcement Directorate, or any other Indian authority makes on your tax affairs is expressly excluded.

Nothing in Section 12 limits or excludes liability for (a) death or personal injury caused by the Company's negligence, (b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation by the Company, (c) any liability that cannot, as a matter of mandatory law, be excluded or limited.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Company, its sole proprietor, its empanelled CAs, its Data Processors, and its successors and permitted assigns, from and against any and all claims, demands, suits, proceedings, liabilities, losses, damages, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or in connection with (a) your breach of these Terms or any policy referenced herein, (b) your violation of any applicable law, (c) any inaccuracy or omission in the inputs you provide to the Service, (d) any tax demand, penalty, or interest assessed against you that does not arise from the Company's gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or (e) any infringement by you of the intellectual property, privacy, or other rights of any third party.

Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performance to the extent the failure or delay is caused by an event beyond the reasonable control of that party, including act of God, flood, earthquake, cyclone, fire, epidemic, pandemic, war, terrorism, civil disturbance, strike, lockout, governmental action, denial- of-service attack, internet outage, undersea-cable cut, or failure of a critical upstream service provider. The affected party shall notify the other promptly of the event and shall use reasonable efforts to resume performance as soon as practicable. If the event continues for more than thirty days, either party may terminate the affected obligation without further liability.

The Company may suspend or terminate your Account on written notice if you breach these Terms in a material respect, if you fail to pay Fees when due, if you submit information that the Company reasonably suspects to be fraudulent, if a competent authority orders the suspension or termination, or if continuing to provide the Service would expose the Company to liability under applicable law. You may terminate your Account at any time through the in-product "/settings > Close account" path or by writing to support@elevatefinance.co. Sections 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, and 18 survive termination. After termination, the Company retains Personal Data only for the period the Privacy Policy permits and purges it on schedule.

These Terms are governed by, and shall be construed in accordance with, the laws of the Republic of India, without reference to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts situated in Pune, Maharashtra, India. Nothing in this Section deprives a User who is a "consumer" within the meaning of Section 2(7) of the Consumer Protection Act 2019 of the right to invoke the consumer forum applicable to that User's place of residence under Section 35 of that Act.

Before invoking any judicial or quasi-judicial forum, the parties shall make a good- faith attempt to resolve the dispute through writ-free written correspondence addressed to support@elevatefinance.co, with the literal token "[Dispute]" in the subject line, for a period of thirty calendar days. If the dispute is not resolved within that period, the parties may either (a) refer the dispute to arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996, by a sole arbitrator appointed jointly, with the seat of arbitration at Pune and the language of arbitration English, or (b) approach the courts of competent jurisdiction in Pune in line with Section 17. The election of remedy lies with the party initiating the proceeding, subject to the Consumer Protection Act 2019 carve-out.

The Company may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email to the address on file at least seven calendar days before they take effect, save where a change is required by a regulator on a shorter timeline, in which case notice will be given as soon as practicable. Continued use of the Service after the effective date of a change constitutes acceptance of the changed Terms. The version stamp at the top of this page is the controlling indicator of the Terms in force.

Notices to you will be sent to the email address on file or, where appropriate, to the registered postal address you provide. Notices to the Company must be sent to support@elevatefinance.co or to the registered postal address on the contact page. A notice is deemed received on the working day after dispatch in the case of email, and on the third working day after dispatch in the case of registered post.

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect, and the provision in question shall be read down to the minimum extent necessary to render it valid. No failure or delay in exercising a right or remedy under these Terms operates as a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without the Company's prior written consent; the Company may assign these Terms to a successor entity in connection with a reorganisation, sale of assets, or change of legal form, on notice to you. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Refund Policy constitute the entire agreement between the parties and supersede all prior or contemporaneous communications and proposals on the subject matter.

For any complaint relating to these Terms or to your use of the Service, write to support@elevatefinance.cowith the literal token "[Grievance]" in the subject line. We acknowledge within forty-eight hours and provide a written substantive response within fifteen calendar days, in line with Rule 5(9) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. Unresolved grievances may be escalated to the Data Protection Board of India once the Board is operational, or to a court of competent jurisdiction.

For any question about these Terms, write to support@elevatefinance.co. Our registered postal address is published on the contact page.