Privacy

This page describes what the TaxCloak website is written to do. It is not a promise that every future build will stay that way, and it is not legal advice.

On-device only

The site is static. The rules that find SSNs, names, addresses, and account numbers run in your browser. The document stays in the tab. There is no TaxCloak account and no server whose job is to receive a return.

No uploads, and no third-party network

The pages send a Content-Security-Policy that allows only this site: scripts, workers, images, and connections. PDF.js and Tesseract, including the worker, the wasm, and the English language data, are files that ship with this website. They are not loaded from a CDN.

Opening the tool fetches those programs from this origin. That request is the program, not your file. A PDF or a photo is read with the File API and is not placed in a request body. Pasted text does not start a request at all.

After the tool page has loaded, turn off wifi and it still works. Pasted text redacts immediately. A PDF or a photo can be read offline once those program files are in the tab. If you disconnect before they finish, paste the text instead.

You can watch this. Open developer tools, choose the Network tab, and click a text sample. You should see no upload. The privacy meter on the tool lists fetch and XHR calls during a redaction. A call that leaves this site, uses a method other than GET or HEAD, or has a body is shown as a problem.

True redaction

A downloaded PDF of a file or a photo is a new picture of the pages. Black rectangles are painted into the pixels. The original text layer, metadata, notes, form fields, and attachments are not copied into that file. Drawing a box on top of the original PDF would leave the text recoverable. This export does not do that. Pasted text with no page image becomes a PDF of the redacted words only.

No accounts, tracking, or analytics

There is no sign-in and no analytics product. The site does not record the text or the pixels of a document. The private mapping key is built in memory. Downloading it uses a local blob URL. The site does not write that key into browser storage, and it does not upload it. The file contains the original values. Do not paste it into an assistant.

Review every page before sharing

The detector catches most common identifiers on W-2, 1099, 1040, Schedule K-1, and 1098 layouts. It does not catch all of them. An unlabeled name can be missed, and a scan can be misread. Read every page and every highlight before you copy or download. On a shared computer, close the tab when you are done. The document and the mapping key stay in that tab until you close it.

TaxCloak does not claim HIPAA, SOC 2, or any other certification. Local processing is not a compliance program, and it is not tax, legal, or security advice.

The fictitious samples are files on this site. Opening a sample PDF or scan is a GET of that sample. The text samples are already in the page, so redacting them does not fetch the file.

What this does not mean

Local processing does not mean a redaction is complete. It does not mean a screenshot, a browser extension, or the assistant you paste into later is private. It does not mean TaxCloak can recover a document you already pasted into a chatbot.

Questions about a specific return belong with a tax preparer or the IRS, not with this tool. See the terms.