Tutor Agreement

1. This agreement

This Tutor Agreement applies when you list yourself as a tutor on TutorBoost and when you accept paid bookings. It is between you and TutorBoost (“TutorBoost”, “we”). The Fees and Refunds, How Search Results Are Ranked, Acceptable Use and Safety, Privacy Notice and Complaints and Disputes pages form part of it. If you buy Pro or fund ads, the Pro Subscription Terms and Advertising Programme Terms terms also apply. You accept this agreement by ticking the box when you apply or when you turn on paid bookings. You can download or print this page at any time.

2. Who can be a tutor

• You must be 18 or older, and the account must be your own.
• You teach as a business. You confirm that you offer lessons in the course of your trade, business or profession (for example as a self-employed person, sole trader or company), not as a private individual. Students are told this.
• Everything on your profile must be true, and you must be able to teach what you list.
• We review every application before a profile is published, and we may decline an application or ask for more information.
• You may teach adults only. TutorBoost does not allow lessons for anyone under 18.

3. You are independent

You are an independent contractor running your own business. Nothing in this agreement makes you an employee, worker, agent or partner of TutorBoost. You decide whether to list, which students to teach, your price (within the $10 to $200 range), your availability and how you teach. There is no minimum number of lessons, no set hours and no exclusivity: you may teach elsewhere, privately or on other services at the same time. You provide your own equipment, connection, materials and insurance. Employment status is decided by the law of your country and by how the relationship works in practice; take your own advice if you are unsure.

4. Your profile and lessons

• Online bookings through TutorBoost are 60-minute lessons at the price on your profile, taught in the TutorBoost lesson room.
• The cancellation and no-show rules on the Fees and Refunds page apply to every booking. You cannot set different rules for a TutorBoost booking.
• If you cancel a booked lesson, the student is refunded in full and the cancellation is recorded on your account. Repeated cancellations or no-shows may lead us to pause your bookings (section 10).
• Do not ask a student to pay again, or to pay outside TutorBoost, for a lesson booked and paid through TutorBoost.
• You may arrange lessons directly with a student and be paid outside TutorBoost. TutorBoost takes no commission on those lessons and does not protect, refund or decide disputes about them.

5. Commission

For each lesson booked and paid through TutorBoost, TutorBoost keeps a commission from the lesson price. The commission is a fee for our marketplace, payment, lesson-room and support services. It is not a wage deduction. The student also pays TutorBoost a separate 5% service fee on top of your price; it is not taken from you.

• “Completed lesson hours” counts lessons booked through TutorBoost that were settled to you, measured in minutes. “Different paying students” counts students who paid for at least one of those lessons.
• You move down a step when you meet both conditions. Steps are never reversed, even if a later lesson is refunded or disputed.
• Each booking shows the rate quoted at the time it was made. When the lesson is settled we apply your rate at that moment, which can only be the same or lower.
• Neither Pro nor the advertising programme changes your commission.

Worked example: $40.00 lesson. The student pays $42.00. At 32% you receive $27.20 (commission $12.80). At 17% you receive $33.20 (commission $6.80).

6. How you are paid

• TutorBoost collects lesson payments from students on your behalf as your limited payment collection agent. A student’s payment to TutorBoost counts as payment to you.
• A lesson is settled after it ends: automatically from the lesson-room record, or when you mark it as taught where the room was not used (see Fees and Refunds). Contested lessons are settled only after a person decides.
• Payouts run weekly (Mondays). Each settled lesson is transferred to your Stripe account once your settled, unpaid total is at least $20. Amounts are in US dollars; Stripe pays them to your bank on its own schedule and may convert currency.
• TutorBoost charges no payout fee. We pay card-processing, transfer and video costs from our share.
• If a lesson is refunded or a card payment is disputed after you were paid, your share of it is reversed from your Stripe account or, if that is not possible, set off against your future earnings. You can see the reason for every reversal on your earnings page. We do not pass card-network dispute fees on to you.
• Your earnings page shows every lesson with its price, commission and amount, and its status (pending, settled, on its way, paid or reversed).

7. Where we can pay tutors

Payouts are made through Stripe Connect to tutors whose payout country is one of these 34: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.

Where Stripe Connect is not available, we may pay you through Stripe Global Payouts once we have switched it on for your country: Stripe collects your bank details on its own pages and sends your earnings to your bank by local transfer or, in some countries, by international wire, converting US dollars to your currency where needed. Global Payouts batches wait until you are owed at least the minimum shown on your earnings page, which is higher where only a wire is available. TutorBoost pays Stripe’s payout and conversion fees; your bank, or an intermediary bank for a wire, may charge its own fee to receive the money. A payout sent this way cannot be reversed from your bank account, so a refund or dispute on a lesson already paid is set off against your next payout.

In some other countries we plan to pay through PayPal Payouts, which is not available yet. If you are in one of those countries your profile can be listed, your earnings page shows “Payout method pending”, and any earnings are kept as pending and are not paid until that method is available. In countries where neither provider can pay, your profile can be listed but your earnings cannot be paid out. Check your earnings page before accepting a paid booking.

8. Stripe

Payment processing services for tutors on TutorBoost are provided by Stripe and are subject to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which includes the Stripe Terms of Service (together, the “Stripe Services Agreement”). By agreeing to this agreement or continuing to operate as a tutor on TutorBoost, you agree to be bound by the Stripe Services Agreement, as it may be modified by Stripe from time to time. You accept it in Stripe’s own setup screens when you connect your payout account. As a condition of TutorBoost enabling payment processing services through Stripe, you agree to provide TutorBoost accurate and complete information about you and your business, and you authorise TutorBoost to share it and transaction information related to your use of the payment processing services provided by Stripe.

When PayPal payouts become available, the PayPal User Agreement for your country will apply to your PayPal account. You must hold that account in your own name.

9. Tax

• You are responsible for your own income tax, social-security or self-employment contributions, and any VAT, GST or sales tax due on your lessons. TutorBoost does not withhold tax from payouts and does not give tax advice.
• US tutors: Stripe collects tax identity information during setup, and TutorBoost or Stripe may issue Form 1099 and report payments to the IRS where US law requires.
• EU-resident tutors: EU law (Council Directive (EU) 2021/514, “DAC7”) requires platforms to collect and report information about sellers of personal services, including your name, address, date of birth, tax identification number and Member State of issue, VAT number if you have one, and the bank account you are paid to, together with your earnings and fees for each quarter. We will ask for this information, may hold your payouts if it is not provided after reminders, and will give you a copy of what we report.
• Other countries may impose similar reporting duties, which we will follow.

10. Restricting, suspending or ending your account

We may restrict, suspend or remove your profile or account if:

• your profile is untrue or misleading, or you cannot teach what you list;
• you break the Acceptable Use and Safety policy, for example harassment, fraud, or teaching or contacting anyone under 18;
• you repeatedly cancel booked lessons or do not turn up;
• you ask students to pay twice, or outside TutorBoost, for a lesson booked through TutorBoost;
• we receive a valid notice that your content is illegal, or the law requires it;
• there is a high rate of refunds, disputes or chargebacks on your lessons; or
• we can no longer lawfully pay you, or you do not provide information the law requires us to collect.

When we restrict or suspend you, we will give you a statement of the specific facts and reasons, on a durable medium (usually email), at the latest when it takes effect. If we end your use of TutorBoost entirely, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice with reasons, except where the law requires us to act sooner, where there is an imperative legal reason, or where you have repeatedly broken this agreement. You can reply to any such decision and ask for it to be reviewed (see Complaints and Disputes). Paid lessons that have already been booked are refunded to students or completed as the Fees and Refunds page sets out, and settled earnings are paid to you unless they are reversed under section 6.

You can stop listing, turn off bookings or close your account at any time.

11. Your content and where it appears

You keep ownership of your profile text, photo and video. You give TutorBoost a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, display and adapt them (for example resizing a photo) to run the marketplace, including showing your profile in search, on subject and home pages, in search engines and in TutorBoost’s own marketing and social media posts about tutors on TutorBoost. If you fund ads, the Advertising Programme Terms terms also apply. The licence ends when your profile is removed, except for copies we must keep by law or that are already in published material we cannot reasonably withdraw.

12. Ranking, equal treatment and data

• How profiles are ordered in search, and the effect of any paid option, is explained on How Search Results Are Ranked.
• TutorBoost, or the person who runs it, may list itself as a tutor on the same terms as any other tutor. Its own lessons are disclosed as such on that profile, it gets no different treatment in search or ranking, and its own bookings do not count toward any review or ranking.
• You can see your profile, messages, bookings, lesson records and earnings, and download your account data from your settings. You receive the student details you need to teach a booked lesson; you may use them only for that lesson and your relationship with that student.
• TutorBoost keeps booking, payment, attendance and review data to run and improve the marketplace and does not give it to other tutors. Aggregated statistics are not shared with you.
• After your account closes, you can still request a copy of your data, subject to what we must keep by law (see Privacy Notice).
• We do not stop you offering lessons on different terms or at different prices elsewhere.

13. Changes to this agreement

We will notify you of any proposed change to this agreement by email at least 15 days before it applies to you, and at least 30 days before for a change to the commission, the student service fee or another price. A longer period applies where you need more time to adapt. You may end this agreement before the change takes effect. A change never applies to a lesson already booked. You may accept a change earlier by a clear action, such as accepting the new agreement in your account. The notice period does not apply where we must change the agreement to comply with the law, or to deal with an unforeseen and imminent danger such as fraud or a security threat.

14. Liability

We provide our services with reasonable care and skill. We do not promise any number of students, bookings or earnings. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable to you for indirect or consequential loss or lost profits, and our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to the commission and fees you paid us in that period. Nothing in this agreement limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any liability that cannot be limited by law.

15. Complaints, mediation and law

You can complain to us about any aspect of our service, free of charge, as set out on Complaints and Disputes. We are willing to consider mediation in good faith to settle a dispute that our complaint process does not resolve. This agreement is governed by the law of the State of Delaware, United States. Nothing in it removes a right you have under laws that cannot be excluded by contract, including the right of business users in the EU and UK to bring a claim in their own courts under the rules on online intermediation services.