Terms of Use — Tax Wiki

Last updated: 2026-09-16
Operator: Freshlake AI Inc.

These Terms of Use (the “Agreement”) form a legally binding agreement between the individual accessing or using Tax Wiki (the “User”, “you”) and Freshlake AI Inc. (“Freshlake”, “we”, “us”).

Tax Wiki means the website and related interfaces operated by Freshlake at tax.wiki and www.tax.wiki (including any successor URLs), comprising (i) published Canadian income tax reference content, guides, and rate tables, and (ii) the Ask chat interface that lets visitors submit tax-related questions and receive AI-generated responses (together, the “Service”).

This Agreement applies only to Tax Wiki as described above. It does not govern Freshlake’s other products or platforms, and it does not govern Ledger or any tax advisory practice that Freshlake or related parties may offer in the future. Those products, if and when offered, will have separate terms.

This Agreement is effective as of the earliest date you first access or use any part of the Service (the “Effective Date”).

BY ACCESSING OR USING TAX WIKI, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTOOD, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THIS AGREEMENT AND THE TAX WIKI PRIVACY POLICY, AS AMENDED FROM TIME TO TIME. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY STOP USING THE SERVICE.

The Ask footer may restate acceptance of this Agreement and the Privacy Policy; it does not replace this Agreement.

You represent that you have the legal capacity to enter into this Agreement.

1. The Service

1.1 What Tax Wiki is

Tax Wiki is a public Canadian income tax reference: wiki guides, personal income tax rate tables (federal and provincial/territorial), and an Ask interface for general tax-related questions. The Service is provided for informational and reference purposes.

Tax Wiki is not:

tax, legal, accounting, financial, or other professional advice;
a filing service, tax return preparation product, or calculator that determines your filing position;
a substitute for advice from a qualified tax professional, lawyer, or accountant;
an engagement of Freshlake, any related advisory practice, or any professional as your advisor;
Ledger, return-prep software for tax professionals, or any paid advisory service.

1.2 No professional-client relationship

Nothing on Tax Wiki creates a professional-client, advisor-client, solicitor-client, or similar relationship. Ask answers and wiki content may be incomplete, outdated, incorrect, or inapplicable to your circumstances. You are solely responsible for verifying any information against official sources (including the Canada Revenue Agency and applicable provincial authorities) and for obtaining advice appropriate to your situation before filing, planning, or relying on any content or Ask output.

1.3 Access; no accounts

Tax Wiki is offered without mandatory user accounts for ordinary browsing and Ask use. Freshlake may introduce accounts, authentication, rate limits, or other access controls later. You do not own any Tax Wiki chat identifier (including chat UUID).

1.4 Availability; modifications; suspension

The Service is provided as available. Freshlake may update, change, suspend, throttle, rate-limit, restrict, or discontinue any part of the Service (including Ask models, wiki pages, or rate tables) at any time, with or without notice, and without liability.

Freshlake may suspend or restrict access (including Ask) if we believe use violates this Agreement, applicable law, or creates security, abuse, legal, operational, or reputational risk; to perform maintenance; to comply with law; or to protect Freshlake, users, infrastructure, or third-party providers.

1.5 Third-party services and AI providers

The Service may rely on third-party hosting, infrastructure, analytics, and AI services. Ask prompts and related context may be sent through Vercel AI Gateway (and underlying model providers via that gateway) to generate responses. Those providers process information under their own terms and practices. Freshlake does not control and is not responsible for third-party availability, retention, training settings, moderation, security, or output quality.

1.6 Monitoring and improvement

Freshlake may collect, monitor, retain, and analyze usage data and Ask-related content as described in the Tax Wiki Privacy Policy, including to operate, secure, debug, prevent abuse, and improve, develop, evaluate, test, benchmark, fine-tune, train, and commercialize Tax Wiki and Freshlake models and products. By using Ask, you acknowledge that prompts, answers, and related metadata may be used as learning signals, consistent with the Privacy Policy.

2. Eligibility; competitors; intended use

2.1 Intended purpose only

Tax Wiki is offered only for its intended purpose: personal or professional reference use of Canadian tax information published on Tax Wiki, and Ask questions that are general or hypothetical and consistent with that reference use. You may not use the Service for any other purpose.

Ask is only for general or hypothetical tax reference questions. Do not submit Personal Information or other banned data to Ask — see Section 2.4.

Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use the Service to copy, appropriate, reverse engineer, or otherwise take Freshlake’s designs, user experience, product approach, workflows, prompts, model routing, editorial methods, rate-table presentation, Ask behavior, or other non-public or proprietary aspects of Tax Wiki for your own product, service, or competitive advantage.

2.2 Competitors barred (status) and competitive conduct (everyone)

Tax Wiki’s competitive restrictions have two independent layers. Breach of either layer is unauthorized use and a material breach of this Agreement. Freshlake may investigate, block access, pursue remedies at law or equity, and require certification that you are not a Direct Competitor and are not using the Service for a prohibited competitive purpose.

(a) Status ban — Direct Competitors

Direct Competitors (and their Affiliates, employees, contractors, agents, consultants, and anyone else acting on their behalf) may not access or use the Service for any reason whatsoever, including evaluation, research, training, benchmarking, monitoring, competitive intelligence, product development, scraping, or “just looking,” unless Freshlake has given prior written consent for a specifically described limited use.

For these Terms, a “Direct Competitor” means any person or entity that:

provides Canadian tax information as a product or service (including tax rates, guides, calculators, research tools, or reference content offered to the public or to professionals); or
provides AI products or services marketed to legal, tax, and/or accounting professions or professionals (illustrative examples include Harvey, Spellbook, and BlueJ — these examples are non-exhaustive and do not limit the definition).

“Affiliate” means any entity that controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with a Direct Competitor.

If you are a Direct Competitor, an Affiliate of a Direct Competitor, an employee or contractor of either, or acting on behalf of either, you are not authorized to use Tax Wiki (except under a prior written consent described above).

(b) Conduct ban — applies to everyone

Separately from the status ban in (a), and whether or not you are a Direct Competitor, you must not use the Service — or any wiki content, rate tables, Ask Inputs or Outputs, designs, prompts, model routing, editorial methods, or other non-public or proprietary aspects obtained from the Service — to:

build, develop, train, fine-tune, evaluate, benchmark, monitor, or improve any competing or substantially similar product or service (including Canadian tax information products or AI products marketed to legal, tax, and/or accounting professions);
scrape, crawl, harvest, bulk-download, or systematically extract Service content or data for a product, training corpus, evaluation suite, or competitive intelligence program;
copy or appropriate Freshlake’s original expression, user experience, workflows, system prompts, routing, editorial methods, rate-table presentation, or Ask behavior for a product or service; or
otherwise access or use the Service for competitive intelligence, product development, or monitoring of Tax Wiki as a competitive product.

Ordinary personal or professional reference use under Section 2.1 is allowed only for users who are not covered by the status ban in (a). Direct Competitors and persons acting for them remain barred under (a) even if their intended use would otherwise look like reference use.

Section 2.3 adds further prohibited conduct (including scrape / reverse-engineering limits for all users). This Section 2.2 does not limit those rules.

2.3 Other prohibited conduct

You must not, and must not attempt to:

use the Service in violation of applicable law or regulation;
interfere with, disrupt, degrade, overload, or circumvent the security, integrity, availability, or rate limits of the Service;
scrape, crawl, harvest, bulk-download, or systematically extract wiki content, rate tables, Ask outputs, designs, or other Service data without Freshlake’s prior written authorization (ordinary browser use for the intended reference purpose, including limited personal copying of publicly displayed pages for that purpose, is permitted only for users who are authorized under Section 2.2 — Direct Competitors and persons acting for them remain barred under Section 2.2(a));
reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract non-public prompts, model routing, system instructions, designs, or implementation details of Ask or related systems, except to the limited extent that applicable law prohibits this restriction;
submit malware, unlawful content, or content you do not have the right to submit;
submit any Personal Information, sensitive information, confidential information, privileged information, or client/customer data to Ask (see Section 2.4);
use Ask outputs for fraud, impersonation, phishing, spam, harassment, or other harmful or unlawful purposes;
represent AI-generated Ask output as human professional advice, or remove required AI disclosures if any are shown; or
otherwise misuse the Service in a way that creates legal, security, competitive, or abuse risk.

Freshlake may investigate suspected violations and may remove content, restrict Ask, or block access.

2.4 No personal, sensitive, or confidential data in Ask

You must not provide any Personal Information, sensitive data, confidential data, privileged data, or other non-public information about yourself or any other person into Ask.

That prohibition includes, without limitation:

names, contact details, addresses, dates of birth, and other identifiers;
Social Insurance Numbers, tax account numbers, business numbers (BN), and other government identifiers;
payment card, banking, or other financial account numbers;
any personal, sensitive, confidential, privileged, or client facts about a real person; and
any other client data about a real person.

Ask inputs must be limited to general or hypothetical tax reference questions that do not identify a real person or disclose confidential facts. If you need advice about a real situation, consult a qualified professional through an appropriate channel — do not paste that situation into Ask.

If you submit prohibited information despite this rule: (a) you do so at your own risk; (b) Freshlake and its AI providers may still process, store, and use that content as otherwise described in this Agreement and the Privacy Policy (including storage without self-serve deletion and learning/training uses, while those remain in effect); (c) Freshlake has no obligation to identify, quarantine, or delete such content except as required by law; and (d) you remain responsible for any harm or claims arising from that submission.

3. Content, ownership, and licenses

3.1 Freshlake materials

Freshlake and its licensors own Tax Wiki’s branding, site design, look and feel, software, documentation, product approach and workflows, wiki editorial content as published by Freshlake, rate-table presentations as published by Freshlake, system prompts, and related technology (excluding your Ask prompts and excluding official government source materials that remain the property of their respective owners). All rights not expressly granted are reserved. Access to Tax Wiki does not grant any license to copy Freshlake’s designs, approach, or proprietary methods.

Tax rates and tax rules originate from public official sources. Freshlake does not claim ownership of CRA or provincial statutory materials. Presentation, selection, arrangement, commentary, and Ask responses on Tax Wiki are subject to this Agreement.

3.2 Your Ask prompts and outputs

As between you and Freshlake, you retain your rights in the prompts and other content you submit to Ask (“Inputs”), to the extent you have such rights, and you own Ask responses generated for you (“Outputs”), subject to Freshlake’s ownership of Tax Wiki, Freshlake technology, Freshlake-owned materials, third-party rights, and any limitations in this Agreement. Outputs exclude Freshlake technology, system prompts, hidden reasoning, model routing, generic techniques, know-how, usage data, aggregated data, and Freshlake-owned materials embedded in or used to generate Outputs. Outputs may not be unique; similar answers may be generated for other users. Your ownership of Outputs does not limit the license you grant Freshlake below, and does not authorize uses prohibited by Sections 2.1–2.3 (including competitive use). Ask chats are stored and accessible by chat identifier (for example a chat URL). They are not private threads; anyone with the identifier may be able to retrieve the chat.

You represent and warrant that your Inputs comply with Section 2.4 and do not include Personal Information, sensitive, confidential, privileged, or client data. Freshlake does not want and does not solicit that information through Ask.

You grant Freshlake, its affiliates, and its service providers a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, and fully paid-up license to access, collect, host, store, process, disclose, transfer, transmit, copy, modify, display, create derivative works of, and use Inputs and Outputs to:

provide, operate, secure, support, and maintain the Service;
prevent abuse, investigate incidents, enforce this Agreement, and comply with law; and
analyze, improve, develop, evaluate, test, benchmark, fine-tune, train, and commercialize Tax Wiki and Freshlake models and products, including using Inputs and Outputs as learning signals, as further described in the Privacy Policy.

This license survives your stop-use of the Service, subject to the Privacy Policy and applicable law.

Freshlake may also create aggregated or de-identified data that does not reasonably identify you, and may use that data for any lawful purpose.

3.3 Feedback

If you provide feedback, suggestions, or vote signals (including Ask vote events), Freshlake may use them without restriction or compensation. Feedback is not confidential.

3.4 Third-party AI providers

You authorize Freshlake, Vercel AI Gateway, and underlying model providers acting through that gateway to process Inputs, Outputs, and related metadata as needed to provide Ask. Freshlake is not responsible for provider-side retention, training, or security practices beyond Freshlake’s own contractual and operational controls.

4. Privacy

Personal information processed in connection with Tax Wiki is handled as described in the Tax Wiki Privacy Policy. By using the Service, you acknowledge that policy.

5. Fees

Tax Wiki is free for ordinary public use; this Agreement does not cover paid plans. Freshlake may introduce paid features, accounts, or other products later under separate or amended terms.

6. Disclaimers

6.1 As is / as available

THE SERVICE, INCLUDING ALL WIKI CONTENT, RATE TABLES, ASK OUTPUTS, AND RELATED MATERIALS, IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. Use is at your own risk. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Freshlake disclaims all express, implied, and statutory warranties and conditions, including merchantability, merchantable quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, currency, reliability, and quiet enjoyment.

Freshlake does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that defects will be corrected, or that rate tables or Ask answers are complete, current, or correct for your situation.

6.2 Tax and professional disclaimer (critical)

TAX WIKI DOES NOT PROVIDE TAX, LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, FINANCIAL, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. Ask outputs and wiki content are general reference information only. They may be wrong. Tax law changes. Provincial and federal rules interact in complex ways. You must independently verify information before relying on it for filing, planning, remittances, elections, or advice to others. Filing and compliance remain your (or your advisor’s) responsibility.

6.3 Security

Freshlake takes reasonable measures designed to help protect the Service, but cannot guarantee that unauthorized parties will never access data or that data will never be lost or altered. You use the Service at your own risk.

7. Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Freshlake, its affiliates, and their respective directors, officers, employees, agents, and service providers from and against claims, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (i) your Inputs (including any Personal Information, sensitive, confidential, or privileged data you submit despite Section 2.4) or your use of Outputs; (ii) your breach of this Agreement; (iii) your violation of law or third-party rights; or (iv) your misuse of the Service.

Freshlake does not provide an indemnity to Users under this Agreement.

8. Limitation of liability

The following limitations reflect a fair allocation of risk and form an essential basis of the bargain between you and Freshlake. They survive and continue in full force despite any failure of essential purpose or of an exclusive remedy.

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

Freshlake’s total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to this Agreement or the Service — whether in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, or any other theory — will not exceed the total fees you paid to Freshlake specifically for Tax Wiki in the twelve (12) months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim. Where no such fees were paid (including ordinary free use of Tax Wiki), Freshlake’s liability is limited to CAD $0 — meaning, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Freshlake will have no liability for unpaid or free use. Multiple claims do not increase this maximum.
Freshlake will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages; loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or anticipated savings; business interruption; or cost of substitute services; even if advised of the possibility.
Freshlake’s third-party suppliers, hosting providers, analytics providers, and AI model providers have no liability to you under this Agreement.

Nothing in this Section limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any non-waivable statutory duty, to the extent such liability cannot be limited under applicable law. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions; in those jurisdictions, Freshlake’s liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted.

9. Term and termination

This Agreement continues while you access or use the Service. You may stop using Tax Wiki at any time. Freshlake may suspend or terminate access at any time as described above. Provisions that by nature should survive (ownership, disclaimers, indemnity, liability limits, governing law, and similar) survive termination.

Freshlake has no obligation to export, return, or delete Ask chats except as required by law or as stated in the Privacy Policy. Users cannot self-delete Ask chats.

10. Support

Support and other inquiries about Tax Wiki may be sent to contact@tax.wiki, at Freshlake’s discretion, with no guaranteed response time or service level.

11. General

11.1 Notices

Notices to Freshlake must be in writing to contact@tax.wiki (Attn: Legal Department), or any mailing address Freshlake designates on tax.wiki. Freshlake provides notices primarily by posting on Tax Wiki (including at /terms and /privacy). Freshlake may also email you if you contacted Freshlake and supplied an address.

11.2 Assignment

You may not assign this Agreement without Freshlake’s prior written consent. Freshlake may assign this Agreement without your consent, including to an affiliate or in connection with a corporate transaction.

11.3 Governing law and venue

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to conflicts of law principles. Exclusive jurisdiction and venue for ordinary claims lie in the courts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The UN CISG does not apply. To the maximum extent permitted by law, claims must be brought individually (not as a class or representative proceeding); this class/collective restriction is void where prohibited (for example, under Québec Consumer Protection Act s. 11.1 or Ontario Consumer Protection Act, 2002 s. 8, if this Agreement is a consumer agreement to which those provisions apply). Nothing in this Section prevents Freshlake from seeking injunctive or other equitable relief in any jurisdiction as necessary to protect its intellectual property, confidential information, security, systems, or users — that carve-out does not undo exclusive Toronto venue for ordinary claims.

11.4 Export and sanctions

You must comply with applicable Canadian, U.S., and other export control and sanctions laws in connection with your use of the Service.

11.5 Force majeure

Freshlake is not liable for delays or failures from events beyond reasonable control (including provider outages and other infrastructure or third-party failures).

11.6 Severability; waiver; entire agreement

If any provision is unenforceable, the remainder remains in effect. Waivers must be in writing. This Agreement is the entire agreement regarding Tax Wiki and supersedes prior communications on that subject. Freshlake’s relationship to you is that of an independent service operator; nothing creates a partnership or agency.

11.7 Amendments

Freshlake may amend this Agreement, in whole or in part, by posting the amended terms on Tax Wiki (including at /terms), updating the “Draft date” / “Last updated” date, or otherwise making amended terms available through the Service. Unless otherwise indicated, an amendment becomes effective when posted or made available. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree, stop using the Service.

11.8 English language

It is the express wish of the parties that this Agreement and related documents be drawn up in English. C’est la volonté expresse des parties que la présente convention ainsi que les documents qui s’y rattachent soient rédigés en anglais. French-language versions of these Terms are not provided.

11.9 Definitions (selected)

“Ask” means the Tax Wiki chat interface for submitting questions and receiving AI-generated responses.
“Affiliate” and “Direct Competitor” have the meanings in Section 2.2.
“Personal Information” has the meaning in the Privacy Policy.
“Service” means Tax Wiki as defined above.
“User” means any person who accesses or uses the Service (and who is eligible under Section 2).