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Terms of Service

NRI Clear

Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE] Last updated: [EFFECTIVE DATE] Version: 1.0-draft

Draft — not yet published. Must be reviewed by counsel, and the open items in legal/PUBLISHING-CHECKLIST.md must be closed, before this is shown to a user. Sections 4, 13, 14, 15 and 18 in particular need a lawyer's eyes.

The short version

This box is a summary for convenience. The numbered sections below are the actual agreement.

  • You file your return. We give you software that fills in the forms; we do not sign, review, or file anything.
  • This is not tax advice. Nothing here creates an accountant-client or attorney-client relationship.
  • An AI reads your documents and it makes mistakes. You must check every figure before you file. You are responsible for what you file.
  • We only handle simple nonresident student situations. Section 5 lists what we do not handle.
  • We do not e-file. You print, sign and mail your return yourself.
  • We do not prepare state returns. You probably still owe one.

1. Agreement to these terms

NRI Clear ("the Service") is operated by [COMPANY LEGAL NAME] ("we", "us"). By creating a session, uploading a document, or using any part of the Service, you agree to these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information and forms part of these Terms.

2. What the Service is — and is not

What it is. Software that asks you questions, reads your tax documents, applies the substantial presence test and any applicable tax treaty, computes your US federal tax, and produces filled-in IRS forms for you to print, sign and mail.

What it is not:

  • Not tax advice. We are not your accountant, enrolled agent, attorney, or financial adviser. Using the Service does not create a professional relationship of any kind. If your situation is not straightforward, consult a qualified tax professional.
  • Not a tax return preparer service. You are the preparer of your own return. No human at our company reviews your return before you receive it. The return you produce is a self-prepared return.
  • Not an e-filing service. We do not transmit anything to the IRS. Nothing is filed until you mail it yourself.
  • Not a state tax service. See section 5.
  • Not a record-keeping service. We delete your data on the schedule in the Privacy Policy. Keep your own copies.

3. Who may use the Service

You may use the Service only if you:

  • are at least 18 years old;
  • are filing your own return, not somebody else's;
  • give us accurate and complete information.

Preparing returns for other people through this Service is not permitted (see section 8).

4. Accuracy, AI, and your responsibility to review

Please read this section carefully. It is the most important one.

4.1 The AI is not perfect

The Service uses an artificial intelligence model to read the figures off the documents you upload. It makes mistakes. In our own testing against a small set of clean, computer-generated sample documents (145 fields across 16 documents, as of 2026-08-13), the model read every field correctly. Do not read that as a guarantee, or as the accuracy you should expect. Our samples are generated PDFs; a scan, a photograph, an unusual layout, or a form we have not tested is harder to read, and we have not measured how much harder. We expect real-world errors and you should too.

The Service also derives draft figures from linked bank accounts. Bank data is not a tax form. A payroll deposit shows net pay, not the gross wages in W-2 box 1, and it cannot show tax withheld. Anything derived that way is an estimate and is labelled as one.

4.2 You must check every figure

The Service shows you every extracted figure and asks you to confirm or correct it. That review is not a formality — it is your job, and it is the point at which errors are meant to be caught. By approving your return you confirm that you have checked each figure against your actual documents.

4.3 You are responsible for what you file

You are solely responsible for the return you file, for its accuracy, and for filing and paying on time. If a figure is wrong, if a form is missing, or if you file late, the IRS holds you responsible — penalties and interest under the Internal Revenue Code are assessed against the taxpayer.

4.4 The tax logic itself

We build the Service on our reading of the Internal Revenue Code, IRS Publications 519 and 901, and the form instructions. Tax law changes, and reasonable professionals disagree about parts of it. We do not warrant that every position taken by the Service is correct for your situation. [If a professional review has been completed, state it here: "The tax positions taken by the Service were reviewed by [NAME, CREDENTIAL] on [DATE]." Do not make this claim until it is true.]

4.5 Estimates are estimates

Any refund or balance-due figure the Service shows is an estimate produced from the information you gave us. It is not a promise, a guarantee, or a representation that the IRS will agree with it.

5. What the Service does not handle

The Service is built for a straightforward case: a single, nonresident student-visa holder with wages, scholarship income, and ordinary investment income. It does not support, and you should not rely on it for:

  1. State or local tax returns of any kind. You very likely still have to file one.
  2. Dual-status years — where your immigration status changed part-way through the year.
  3. Married filing statuses. The Service assumes you are single.
  4. Dependents on a nonresident return.
  5. Self-employment or freelance income (Form 1099-NEC, Schedule C).
  6. Rental property income beyond a simple 1099-MISC figure.
  7. Foreign income, foreign accounts, FBAR or FATCA reporting.
  8. Cryptocurrency.
  9. Prior-year or amended returns (Form 1040-X).
  10. ITIN applications (Form W-7).
  11. Residency elections and exceptions, including the closer connection exception, the first-year choice, and elections to be treated as a resident.

Where the Service detects one of these, it warns you. A warning is not a solution — it means stop and get professional help.

6. Your account and session

You are responsible for keeping access to your session secure, and for everything done through it. Tell us promptly at [support@EXAMPLE.com] if you think someone else has accessed your return.

7. Fees

The Service is free. There is no charge for preparing or downloading your return, there is no paid tier, and there is nothing held back behind a payment.

We do not collect a payment method. We do not ask for card details, we have no payment processor, and no part of the Service will ever ask you to enter card or bank-account details in order to keep using it. If a page claiming to be us asks you to pay, it is not us.

There is no refund policy because there is nothing to refund.

We may introduce fees in the future. If we do, we will give you notice by email before any charge is possible, and we will never charge you for something you already used while it was free. Continuing to use the Service after a fee takes effect — and only after you have affirmatively agreed to that fee — is what would create a payment obligation. Silence is not agreement.

Free does not mean unlimited: we apply reasonable rate limits (see §8) so that one user cannot exhaust the service for everyone.

You are responsible for any tax you owe to the IRS. Nothing in this section relates to money you owe the government — we neither collect nor remit it, and the Service being free has no bearing on what you owe.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • use the Service to prepare returns for anyone other than yourself;
  • upload documents that are not yours, or that you are not authorised to upload;
  • submit information you know to be false, or use the Service to commit or facilitate tax fraud;
  • attempt to gain access to another user's session, data or documents;
  • probe, scan, overload, or attempt to disrupt the Service, or circumvent its rate limits or security;
  • scrape, copy, or reverse-engineer the Service, or use it to build a competing product;
  • upload malware, or anything unlawful.

We may suspend or terminate your access immediately if you break these rules.

9. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you upload. You grant us a limited licence to store and process it for the sole purpose of providing the Service to you — and for nothing else. Specifically, we do not use your documents or your tax data to train AI models, ours or anyone else's.

10. Our content

The Service, its software, design and text are ours and are protected by intellectual property law. IRS forms themselves are US government works and are not claimed by us. You may use the returns and documents the Service generates for your own tax filing, freely.

11. Third-party services

If you connect a bank account, that connection is provided by Plaid Inc. under Plaid's own terms and privacy policy. We are not responsible for Plaid's service, and errors in the data it returns are outside our control.

12. Availability

We provide the Service "as available". We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of it. We will try to give notice before removing something you depend on, but we do not guarantee uptime — and tax deadlines do not move because a website is down. Do not leave your filing to the last day.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WITHOUT LIMITING THAT, WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL PRODUCE A CORRECT TAX RETURN, THAT AI-EXTRACTED FIGURES WILL BE ACCURATE, THAT THE TAX POSITIONS IT TAKES ARE CORRECT FOR YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES, OR THAT ANY REFUND ESTIMATE WILL MATCH WHAT THE IRS PAYS.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW:

  1. WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL.
  1. WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY TAX, PENALTY, OR INTEREST ASSESSED AGAINST YOU BY ANY TAX AUTHORITY, INCLUDING WHERE IT ARISES FROM AN ERROR IN AI EXTRACTION, AN ERROR IN THE SERVICE'S TAX CALCULATIONS, A MISSING FORM, OR A MISSED DEADLINE.
  1. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (B) [USD 100 — CONFIRM WITH COUNSEL].

These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose, and they do not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including our own fraud, gross negligence, or wilful misconduct.

Note for counsel: clause 2 is the commercially important one and also the most likely to be challenged, particularly against a consumer user. Please advise on enforceability, on whether an accuracy guarantee or a penalty-reimbursement offer is the better commercial answer, and on whether E&O insurance should sit behind it.

15. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your misuse of the Service, your breach of these Terms, or your submission of information you knew to be false.

16. Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time and ask us to delete your data. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, or if we discontinue the Service. Sections 4, 9, 13, 14, 15 and 18 survive termination.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will notify you by email and update the date above before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the change.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of [STATE], without regard to conflict-of-law rules. [DISPUTE RESOLUTION — decide with counsel whether to require arbitration and to include a class-action waiver, and note that many of our users are outside the US, which affects both enforceability and fairness.]

19. General

  • Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the Service.
  • Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
  • No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, we have not waived it.
  • Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them to a successor in a merger or acquisition.

20. Contact

[support@EXAMPLE.com] [COMPANY LEGAL NAME], [POSTAL ADDRESS]