Terms of Service
1. Provider and scope
These Terms govern access to VAT Guard by business customers. The Service is provided by SITUS FZ L.L.C., a limited liability company licensed by Expo City Dubai Authority under Service Licence No. 00134, with licensed address EC-SD-21-06, 8th Floor, Future Forward Business Hub, Al Wasl 4, Parcel A, Expo City Dubai, Expo Road, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (“SITUS”, “we”, “us”).
By creating an account, subscribing, using the Service or accepting these Terms at checkout, the customer agrees to these Terms on behalf of the business it represents and confirms that the person accepting them has authority to bind that business.
2. Service description
VAT Guard is a browser-based software-assisted workflow intended to help customers monitor suppliers/vendors and expenses/invoices, identify configured verification triggers, guide users through configured checks, organise supporting evidence and maintain an audit history. The Service is decision-support software, not an automated tax opinion.
3. Public demo
The public demo uses fictional/sample data, is non-production, does not create a persistent compliance record and must not be used for real tax decisions. Users must not enter confidential information. SITUS may reset, modify or withdraw the demo at any time.
Unless expressly permitted in writing, users must not scrape, crawl, mirror, republish, reverse engineer, derive source code from, extract rule logic from, use automated tools against, or use the demo or Service to develop or train a competing product, except to the extent a restriction cannot lawfully apply.
4. Accounts and security
The customer must provide accurate account information, protect login credentials and recovery credentials, and ensure only authorised users access the Service. The customer is responsible for activity under its account except to the extent directly caused by SITUS’s breach of applicable law or an express security obligation.
5. Plans, limits and billing
Plan limits and prices are those displayed at checkout. Prices identified as VAT-inclusive include UAE VAT to the extent VAT is legally chargeable by SITUS. The tax invoice or payment record will show the VAT component where required.
Subscriptions are paid in advance and renew automatically for successive monthly or annual periods until cancelled. The customer authorises the payment provider to charge recurring fees. The customer may manage payment details, upgrades, downgrades and cancellation through the available self-service billing portal.
If usage reaches a purchased limit, VAT Guard may restrict creation of new records or other functionality beyond the entitlement until the customer upgrades or reduces usage. SITUS will not intentionally delete existing compliance records merely because a plan limit is reached.
6. Refunds
Except where required by law or expressly stated at checkout, subscription fees are non-refundable once a paid subscription period begins. Any discretionary refund or credit does not create a precedent.
7. Customer responsibility for tax compliance
The customer remains solely responsible for its tax positions and for deciding whether to claim, defer, adjust or reject input VAT. The customer must:
- enter, import and maintain complete and accurate information;
- review prompts, thresholds, statuses, calculations and reports before reliance;
- perform all human verification steps required by law or internal policy;
- retain authentic and sufficient evidence and explanations;
- apply the law to the customer’s actual facts and obtain professional advice for uncertain, unusual, material or disputed matters;
- comply independently with filing, payment, invoicing and record-retention obligations.
8. Legal and regulatory change
Tax legislation, FTA decisions, guidance, interpretations and administrative practice can change. SITUS may update rules and workflows, but does not warrant that every update will be available before a legal change takes effect or that every interpretation will match a later position adopted by an authority or court.
9. Automated extraction and AI
OCR, AI extraction, classification, summarisation and suggested answers are assistive only. They may be wrong, incomplete or misleading. The customer must review and confirm any generated or extracted information before it is treated as a completed compliance record.
10. Customer Content and encrypted architecture
“Customer Content” includes vendor information, invoices, documents, evidence, comments and information entered or generated from customer inputs. The customer retains ownership of Customer Content.
The production architecture may maintain an encrypted working vault in the customer’s browser and, where enabled, an encrypted recoverable backup in cloud storage. The Service is designed so that the backup payload is encrypted before storage. Account, subscription, entitlement, technical and aggregate usage metadata may be stored separately by SITUS and its service providers.
No encryption, browser, device or cloud system can be guaranteed absolutely secure or permanently available. The customer must protect passphrases, recovery keys and authorised devices. If encryption keys are lost and the architecture prevents SITUS from decrypting the backup, SITUS may be technically unable to recover Customer Content.
11. Backups and continuity
Where cloud backup, export or recovery features are offered, customers must follow published recovery instructions and periodically confirm that recovery credentials are available. SITUS does not warrant that customer-side deletion, browser corruption, lost credentials, third-party outages or unsupported devices can always be recovered.
12. Third-party services
VAT Guard may use payment, hosting, authentication, email, storage, analytics, public-registry, OCR/AI or other third-party services. Third-party systems can change, fail or become unavailable. SITUS is not responsible for third-party acts or outages except to the extent responsibility cannot lawfully be excluded.
13. Intellectual property
SITUS and its licensors retain all rights in VAT Guard, including its software, interface, workflows, rule logic, legal mapping, templates, documentation, reports, design and know-how, excluding Customer Content and third-party materials.
During an active subscription, SITUS grants the customer a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to use the Service internally for the subscribed business and within purchased limits.
14. Prohibited use
The customer must not resell, sublicense, copy, scrape, reverse engineer, circumvent technical restrictions, probe security without permission, use the Service unlawfully, upload malicious content, infringe third-party rights, or use VAT Guard to build or train a competing product except where a restriction cannot lawfully apply.
15. Availability, maintenance and changes
The Service is provided on a commercially reasonable availability basis and may be unavailable for maintenance, security response, third-party outages or events beyond SITUS’s reasonable control. SITUS may change features, interfaces, workflows and technical architecture, provided material paid functionality is not intentionally removed without reasonable commercial consideration.
16. No warranties
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. SITUS disclaims implied warranties and does not warrant uninterrupted operation, absence of defects, accuracy of every rule or output, fitness for a particular tax position, prevention of fraud, detection of every suspicious transaction, or acceptance of any deduction by the FTA.
17. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law:
- SITUS will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, punitive or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, opportunity, goodwill or anticipated savings;
- SITUS will not be liable for tax, penalties, interest, denied deductions, assessments or professional fees arising from customer inputs, customer decisions, third-party acts, legal changes or reliance on unreviewed automated output, except to the extent directly caused by SITUS and liability cannot lawfully be excluded;
- SITUS’s aggregate liability arising out of or relating to VAT Guard in any rolling 12-month period will not exceed the subscription fees actually paid by the affected customer to SITUS for VAT Guard during that 12-month period;
- nothing excludes liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, wilful misconduct or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.
18. Customer indemnity
To the extent permitted by law, the customer will indemnify SITUS against third-party claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from unlawful Customer Content, unlawful use, infringement caused by customer-supplied materials or material breach of these Terms, except to the extent caused by SITUS.
19. Suspension and termination
SITUS may suspend access where reasonably necessary for security, unlawful use, non-payment, legal compliance or material entitlement abuse. Where practicable, SITUS will give notice and an opportunity to cure.
On cancellation, access continues until the end of the paid period unless otherwise stated. On expiry or termination, the Service may move to a read-only/export state for a published period. Customers should export or recover records before any announced deletion deadline.
20. Force majeure
Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including failures of telecommunications, hosting, payment networks, government systems, widespread cyber incidents, natural disasters, war, civil disturbance or governmental action, subject to applicable law.
21. Governing law and disputes
These Terms and non-contractual obligations arising from them are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates as applied in the Emirate of Dubai. Subject to mandatory jurisdiction, the courts of Dubai have exclusive jurisdiction.
Before commencing proceedings, each party should provide written notice and allow at least 15 business days for good-faith commercial resolution, except where urgent protective relief is reasonably required.
22. Changes, notices and entire agreement
SITUS may amend these Terms prospectively. Material changes will be notified through the Service or by email where reasonably practicable. These Terms, checkout information, the Privacy Notice and incorporated service descriptions form the agreement for VAT Guard. Invalid provisions are limited to the minimum extent necessary; the remainder continues.
23. Contact
Contractual or legal notices to SITUS should be sent using the contact details published on the VAT Guard website. Customer contact details must be kept current.