Privacy policy
This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it and how we protect it. It is also our financial privacy notice.
Information we collect
To prepare your return, keep your books, run your payroll or advise you on tax, we collect the information you provide and the documents you upload through your secure client portal, for example identification, income and deduction records and prior returns.
If you use our payroll service, that also includes information about the people you pay, such as their names, addresses, taxpayer identification numbers, wage and hour records and bank details for direct deposit. Our public website never asks for Social Security numbers, dates of birth or tax documents.
How we use your information
We use your information only to provide the services you request, such as preparing and filing your returns, keeping your books, running your payroll, advising you on tax and communicating with you about your work. We do not sell your information.
Disclosure of tax return information
Federal law (Internal Revenue Code § 7216) prohibits us from using or disclosing the information you provide for tax preparation for any purpose other than preparing your return, unless you give us your written consent. We will not use or disclose your tax return information for any other purpose without first obtaining that consent.
Financial privacy notice
Federal privacy law treats tax preparers as financial institutions. Like other financial institutions, we collect nonpublic personal information (information about you that is not publicly available) from the information you provide and from your transactions with us.
We restrict access to this information to those who need it to provide services to you, and we maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect it. We do not disclose your nonpublic personal information to anyone except as permitted by law or with your consent.
Social Security numbers
We collect Social Security numbers and other taxpayer identification numbers only as needed to prepare and file your returns and, where you use our payroll service, to run your payroll and produce the Forms W‑2 and 1099 that go with it. That includes the numbers of the people you pay.
We ask for them in person at the office or through your client portal, never through this website. We protect their confidentiality and limit access to them, consistent with North Carolina law.
Document handling
Documents you send through your client portal are encrypted. For details on how we protect your information, see our security page.
Website analytics and advertising
Our public website uses three tools to see how visitors find the site and to measure our advertising:
- Vercel Analytics, which does not use cookies
- the Google tag for Google Ads
- the Meta Pixel, which tells Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, which pages you visit, so that we can measure and show our advertising there
The Google tag and the Meta Pixel may set cookies and share limited information with Google and Meta, such as the pages you visit, when you tap our phone number and how you reached the site.
None of these tools receives your tax documents, your Social Security number or your client-portal information, because this website never asks for them. You can limit or opt out of advertising cookies through your browser settings, your Google Ads settings or your Facebook ad preferences.
Some browsers can send a Do Not Track signal. There is no common standard for how a website should answer that signal, so this website does not respond to it.
Contact form messages
If you use the contact form, we receive the name, email address, telephone number and message you enter, so that we can reply. That form is not a secure channel for sensitive information, and it will refuse anything that looks like a Social Security number. Please use your client portal for tax documents and personal details.
Marketing email
We sometimes contact businesses that are not yet clients to introduce our bookkeeping and tax services. When we do, the contact information comes from public records, most often the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s public register of trucking companies, or from information a business has published itself.
Every message of this kind includes our business address and a link to unsubscribe. You can also opt out at any time on our unsubscribe page, or by replying to any message and asking us to stop.
We honor those requests within ten business days, and we keep a record of the address only so that we do not contact it again.
We do not sell or rent contact information. We share it only with the service providers that store our records and send our email, and only so that they can do that work. Prospect contact information is never combined with client tax records.
This section applies only to marketing email. Communications with existing clients about their returns, bookkeeping or account are governed by the confidentiality terms above and by Internal Revenue Code § 7216.
Changes to this policy
This policy is effective as of October 9, 2026. When we revise it, we will post the new date here.
Contact
To ask about this policy, call, email or write to the office.
- Phone
- (704) 888-1234
- Address
- Carolina Tax Service, 217 West Main Street, Suite A, Locust, NC 28097