Privacy Policy

Client Information, Privacy Policies and Notice Regarding Advisor-Client Privileged Communications

The Federal Trade Commission has issued regulations that require tax preparation firms to provide an annual statement of firm privacy policies. Here is our policy:

We handle all information you provide us with the utmost confidentiality. Your personal information will only be shared with members of our firm who need to know this information in order to complete the work you have hired our firm to do. We will not disclose your personal information to anyone outside our firm without your express written permission to do so, or unless we are legally required to do so. For example, if a mortgage lender contacts our office for a copy of your return or information about it, we will ask that you provide written permission prior to our responding to that request. We ask clients to do their part in protecting their confidential information by only using the secure, encrypted Verifyle client portal setup for them by our office to share documents or other personal identifying information.

You should also be aware that anything you tell us during the interview for the preparation of your tax return is confidential, but not protected from the IRS. Privileged communications (those that are protected from IRS authority to compel our testimony) are limited to non-criminal tax advice on matters before the IRS or non-criminal tax proceedings in federal courts. Although we consider any information you provide us as confidential, return preparation engagements are not covered by advisor-client privilege.

If you feel the nature of any subject matter to be discussed requires protected communications, please raise that issue so that we can discuss your possible need to consult with an attorney for legal advice.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.