Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms and Contracting Parties

1.1. Binding Agreement. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) constitute a legally binding agreement between you (“User,” “you,” or “your”) and the operator of VoteYourPay (“VoteYourPay,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), as identified in our statutory Legal Notice (Impressum). By accessing, browsing, or utilizing any simulation engine, analytical visualization, data feed, or content on voteyourpay.com and its associated subdomains (collectively, the “Platform”), you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms, along with our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, which are incorporated herein by reference. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must immediately cease all use of the Platform.

1.2. Eligibility and Authority. You must be at least 16 years of age (or the applicable age of digital consent in your jurisdiction) to use the Platform independently, or access the Platform under the direct supervision of a parent or legal guardian. If you access the Platform on behalf of a company, institution, or other legal entity, you represent and warrant that you have the legal authority to bind that entity to these Terms.

2. Nature of the Platform and Professional Disclaimers

2.1. Civic and Econometric Simulation. VoteYourPay is an interactive civic-education and econometric modeling platform covering multiple supported global jurisdictions and electorates. The Platform synthesizes (a) published statutory tax brackets and mandatory social contribution frameworks, (b) standardized policy projections derived from publicly stated political party platforms, and (c) aggregated public opinion polling data.

2.2. No Tax, Financial, Legal, or Electoral Advice. All outputs, calculations, projections, and visualizations generated by the Platform are provided strictly for general informational, educational, and analytical purposes. VoteYourPay is not a certified public accountant, tax advisor, financial planner, legal counsel, or registered electoral authority. Your use of the Platform does not create any fiduciary, advisory, or professional-client relationship between you and VoteYourPay.

2.3. Methodology Limitations. Tax legislation is complex and subject to frequent amendment. Furthermore, political party proposals are inherently subject to legislative negotiation and editorial interpretation for modeling purposes, and individual tax liabilities depend on personal factors (such as regional surcharges, marital splitting, allowances, and bespoke deductions) that are simplified within our engines. Public polling data reflects historical snapshots subject to statistical margins of error. You must consult a qualified tax professional, accountant, or legal advisor before making any financial, payroll, relocation, or voting decisions.

2.4. Political Neutrality. VoteYourPay operates as a strictly non-partisan analytical platform. The inclusion, modeling, or visualization of any political party, candidate, or policy proposal does not constitute an endorsement, affiliation, or recommendation by VoteYourPay.

3. Licence to Use and Attribution Standards

3.1. Limited Licence. Subject to your strict compliance with these Terms, we grant you a personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Platform strictly for private, non-commercial informational purposes via a standard web browser.

3.2. Quoting and Sharing. You may share direct hyperlinks to the Platform and publish brief excerpts or screenshots of simulation outputs for commentary, academic research, or journalistic reporting, provided that:

• You provide clear and prominent attribution to VoteYourPay (voteyourpay.com); and
• You do not crop, obscure, alter, or remove any accompanying contextual disclaimers indicating that the output is an indicative simulation rather than official advice.

3.3. Reservation of Rights. No software or source code is licensed or distributed to you. All calculation engines execute transiently within your browser environment, and all rights not expressly granted herein are reserved by VoteYourPay.

4. Acceptable Use and Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to engage in, or assist or permit any third party to engage in, any of the following prohibited activities:

• Misrepresentation of Outputs: Presenting, falsifying, or distributing Platform outputs as official government tax assessments, certified payroll statements, or binding legal documents.
• Automated Extraction & AI Training (TDM Opt-Out): Using any robot, spider, scraper, headless browser, or other automated means to access the Platform, harvest data feeds, or extract calculation logic. We expressly reserve our rights under Article 4(3) of EU Directive 2019/790 (DSM Directive) and equivalent global laws: any text and data mining (TDM), web scraping, or extraction of Platform content for the purpose of training, fine-tuning, or grounding artificial intelligence or machine learning models is strictly prohibited.
• Reverse Engineering & Security Interference: Reverse-engineering, decompiling, disassembling, or attempting to derive the source code or underlying econometric algorithms of the Platform; bypassing rate limits, consent mechanisms, or security controls; or introducing malware, denial-of-service attacks, or harmful code.
• Poll & Traffic Manipulation: Artificially manipulating interactive elements, generating fraudulent traffic, or interfering with the integrity of our third-party advertising partners (including generating invalid clicks, incentivized traffic, or ad-concealment schemes).
• Abuse of Communication Channels: Transmitting spam, unlawful materials, or unredacted third-party personal or confidential financial records via our contact channels.

We reserve the right to monitor, throttle, block, or log abusive traffic patterns for security enforcement and to permanently terminate access for violations of this Section.

5. Intellectual Property Rights

5.1. Platform Ownership. All rights, title, and interest in and to the Platform — including its proprietary calculation engines, user interface design, graphics, analytical visualizations, compilation of data, and explanatory text — are owned by VoteYourPay or its licensors and are protected by international copyright, database, trademark, and intellectual property laws.

5.2. Third-Party Assets and Nominative Use. Third-party datasets, open-source software libraries, typography, and graphic assets utilized on the Platform remain the property of their respective owners and are used pursuant to applicable licences or public domain provisions. Political party names, emblems, national flags, and currency symbols are used strictly in a nominative, descriptive capacity for identification and analytical comparison; such use does not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the respective rights holders. Statutory exceptions for quotation and fair dealing (including §§ 51, 51a of the German Copyright Act — UrhG, and applicable international equivalents) remain unaffected. Commercial licensing inquiries may be directed to contact@voteyourpay.com.

6. Third-Party Data Sources, Advertising, and External Links

6.1. Third-Party Data & Links. Polling aggregations and statutory tax parameters rely on public disclosures, official registries, and third-party polling aggregators. While we conduct regular updates, we do not warrant the real-time accuracy, completeness, or uninterrupted availability of third-party data. Links to external websites are provided solely for convenience; VoteYourPay exercises no control over, does not adopt as its own, and assumes no liability for third-party content or privacy practices.

6.2. Advertising and Monetization. To maintain free public access, the Platform is supported by authorized programmatic advertising partners and third-party monetization networks.

• Advertisements are served and, where applicable, personalized by independent third-party controllers in accordance with your regional consent preferences (as detailed in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy). Refusing advertising consent does not restrict access to core simulation features.
• Displayed advertisements do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by VoteYourPay. Any transactions or dealings between you and a third-party advertiser are solely between you and such advertiser.

7. Disclaimer of Warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Platform and all simulations, data, and content therein are provided on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. VoteYourPay expressly disclaims all implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness, quiet enjoyment, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Platform will operate uninterrupted, be error-free, remain free of security vulnerabilities, or reflect the most recent legislative enactments at any given moment. Mandatory statutory consumer warranty rights that cannot be waived under applicable law remain unaffected.

8. Limitation of Liability

8.1. Unlimited Liability. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for: (a) death or personal injury resulting from negligence; (b) damages caused by intent (Vorsatz) or gross negligence (grobe Fahrlässigkeit); (c) fraudulent concealment of defects; or (d) mandatory liability under applicable product liability laws (such as the German Product Liability Act — ProdHaftG).

8.2. Cardinal Obligations. In cases of slight negligence (leichte Fahrlässigkeit), VoteYourPay shall only be liable for the breach of an essential contractual duty whose fulfillment is a prerequisite for the proper execution of these Terms and on the observance of which the User regularly relies (Kardinalpflicht). In such cases, our liability is strictly limited to the foreseeable, contract-typical damages at the time these Terms were entered into.

8.3. Exclusion of Indirect Damages. Subject to Sections 8.1 and 8.2, VoteYourPay shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or financial opportunity arising out of your reliance on any simulation, tax estimate, or polling visualization provided on the Platform. You assume sole responsibility for all decisions made based on information obtained through the Platform.

9. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless VoteYourPay, its operator, affiliates, and licensors from and against any third-party claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and reasonable legal fees arising out of or connected with your culpable breach of these Terms, your unauthorized commercial exploitation of Platform outputs, or your violation of any law or third-party rights, except to the extent such claims result from our own fault.

10. Modifications, Availability, and Termination

10.1. Platform Evolution. We reserve the right to modify, expand, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Platform — including supported jurisdictions, calculation methodologies, or data feeds — at any time without prior notice or liability. While we strive for high availability, routine maintenance, infrastructure outages, or force majeure events may temporarily interrupt access.

10.2. Amendments to Terms. We may revise these Terms periodically to reflect legislative, technical, or operational updates. The current version will always be published at https://www.voteyourpay.com/terms-of-service with an updated Effective Date. Continued use of the Platform following the publication of revised Terms constitutes your acceptance of the changes.

11. Governing Law, Jurisdiction, and Consumer Dispute Resolution

11.1. Governing Law. These Terms and any disputes arising out of or in connection with them shall be governed by the laws of the European Union and, subsidiarily, the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding its conflict-of-law provisions and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

11.2. Jurisdiction and Consumer Rights. If you are a consumer habitually resident in the European Union or the European Economic Area, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection afforded to you by mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and you may bring claims before the competent courts of your place of residence. If you are acting as a merchant (Kaufmann), a legal entity under public law, or in a commercial capacity, the exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from these Terms shall be the registered seat of the operator as stated in our Legal Notice.

11.3. Consumer Arbitration. In accordance with § 36 of the German Consumer Dispute Resolution Act (VSBG), we hereby state that we are neither legally obligated nor willing to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (Verbraucherschlichtungsstelle).

12. Miscellaneous and Contact

12.1. Severability. Should any provision of these Terms be held invalid, void, or unenforceable in whole or in part, the validity of the remaining provisions shall remain unaffected. The invalid or unenforceable provision shall be replaced by the applicable statutory provision or a valid clause that most closely achieves the original economic and legal intent.

12.2. Language and Precedence. These Terms are drafted in the English language, which shall be the sole authoritative version in the event of any discrepancy with localized summaries or interface translations provided on country-specific pages. Section headings are for convenience only and carry no legal effect.

12.3. Contact Information. For legal inquiries, copyright notices, or methodology anomaly reports, please contact us at contact@voteyourpay.com or via our official Contact page. For your security, please do not transmit unredacted personal tax returns or sensitive identification documents when reporting calculation feedback.