Privacy and Confidentiality Notice
Summary: "We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone, except as instructed to do so by such customers or as required by law. We restrict access to non-public personal information to those professionals necessary to prepare your tax return(s) and we maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to guard your non-public personal information.”
At 7th Floor Expat Tax Service, we value our relationship with our clients, so your privacy and the confidentiality of your information are of utmost importance to us. Therefore, we present this Privacy Policy to explain our firm’s privacy practices.
Privacy Policies That 7th Floor Expat Tax Service Follows:
In order to provide the services you engaged us to perform, we collect non-public information about you from the following possible categories of sources:
1. Online/web based
2. Client- produced information
3. External sources of information
Regarding Online Information:
There are no pages on our website from which you may order products or merchandise from 7th Floor Expat Tax Service, LLC. However, we provide E-mail links to allow you to contact us via email. Therefore, we will have your email address and any information you provide will appear in that email.
Non-identifying and aggregate information is collected in the form of web server logs, which collect the IP addresses of visitors, the files they access, the pages they access, the types of operating systems they use, and the web browsers they use.
How We Use This Information:
We use your return E-mail address and the content of your E-mail to respond to your questions and provide information to you. Such E-mails are filed, but the address and the content you provide are not used for any other purpose.
We use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design our website and facilitate the ease in preparing tax returns. We do not disclose anything that could be used to identify individuals.
Furthermore, we never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us via E-mail or collected by aggregate reporting services in any manner unrelated to the purposes described above.
Regarding Client-Produced Information for Tax Return Preparation, Tax Extensions, Tax Advice, Taxpayer Representation, and/or Tax-Related Services and Matters:
We collect non-public personal information about you from the following sources:
a. Information we receive from you directly on applications, financial statements, tax preparation organizers, tax returns, worksheets, and any other documents that you have provided us.
b. Information we receive on documents from your employers, clients, financial and investment firms, creditors, lenders, mortgage companies, taxing authorities, charities, etc.
c. Information we may receive verbally from your employers, clients, financial and investment firms, creditors, lenders, mortgage companies, taxing authorities, charities and others in response to our inquiries made on your behalf for additional information and/or clarification.
d. Information we receive from other financial or legal professionals and any other reliable third parties on your behalf.
e. Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others.
f. Information we may receive from consumer reporting agencies as authorized by you.
DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION:
We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone, except as permitted and requested by you with a signed Disclosure Authorization Form, or, as required by law.
There are, however, specific cases of limited disclosure that may be required in order to perform the work you have engaged us to do, and to manage this Firm. Those are as follows:
a. Business Services: in order to provide accounting, bookkeeping, consultation, excise tax compliance, financial statement compilation, payroll preparation/recording, payroll tax compliance and any other services offered by this Firm, we may utilize third party services or software which in some cases would require the disclosure of information to reliable third parties who are under Non-Disclosure Agreement to maintain your privacy and utilize the information only in the furtherance of the services being rendered. Included, but limited to only, would be Intuit/QuickBooks®, Intuit Pro-Series, Drake Software, and various Federal, State, and City governmental agencies.
b. Income Tax Preparation: in order to provide IRS e-filing services, we transmit income tax returns to our software vendor who bundles and forwards e-filed returns directly to the Internal Revenue Service over secure computer connections. The vendor receives and returns to this Firm IRS acknowledgements and/or rejections of e-filed returns including error codes. Our vendor(s) are authorized by IRS to perform this service and are required by the IRS and the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act to protect taxpayer information and to not use the data, information, tax returns in any other way.
c. Statistical Analysis: periodically, we perform searches and other research on client data in order to identify issues of importance to our clients, clients who may have specific issues, or to improve the general marketing of the Firm, and to provide feedback on our performance. In the course of these activities, we may disclose limited (name, address) information to companies that perform management or marketing services on our behalf.
Access to your personal information is restricted to those members of this Firm who need to know that information in order to provide services to you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to guard your personal information. This policy covers any information gathered through any means or method, including the collection of email accounts or website identifiers that you may provide us in order to send media notices.
Please note: If you would like for us to be able to discuss your tax information with anyone other than yourself and your spouse, (e.g., a family member or others), please ask us for an Official Release Form. We are prohibited by law from discussing your information with anyone unless we have express written authorization from you to do so.
External Sources of Information:
To provide our clients with useful information about their tax returns, finances, and related financial topics, we provide links to resources outside of our website and our control. Therefore, should a visitor to our website desire to obtain further information from one of these external website links, we use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design our website, inform us of what taxpayers desire in information, and facilitate the ease in preparing tax returns. We do not disclose anything that could be used to identify individuals.
Blogs:
If you use our blog on our website, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums.
Our Commitment To Data Security:
To prevent the unauthorized access to information, maintain data accuracy and integrity, and facilitate the proper usage of taxpayer information, we have ensured that the appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures safeguard and secure the data and information we collect via E-mail and web server records.
Circular 230 Disclaimer
The information contained on this website, including articles and commentary, is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer pursuant to Circular 230. [U.S. Treasury Regulations governing tax practices]