At Accountability Services, we protect your privacy and the confidentiality of your information.
Under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, this Firm is considered a financial institution and is thus required to disclose to all of its clients of the Firm’s Privacy Policies and practices. The Privacy Policies of this Firm are as follows:
In order to provide the services that you have engaged us to perform, we collect non-public information about you from the following possible sources:
- Information we receive from you on applications, financial statements, tax preparation organizers, tax returns, worksheets, and any other documents that you have provided us.
- Information we receive on documents from your employers, clients, financial and investment firms, creditors, lenders, mortgage companies, taxing authorities, charities, etc.
- Information we 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.
- Information we receive from other financial or legal professionals and any other reliable third parties on your behalf.
- Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others.
- Information we may receive from consumer reporting agencies as authorized by you.
The types of personal information we collect depend on the services we provide to you. This information can include Social Security number and birthdate; income and investment sources and amounts; account balances and payment history; and credit or debit card purchase information.
We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone, except as permitted by you, requested by you, 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 would be Intuit/QuickBooks® 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.
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]
If you have any questions about this Policy, please do not hesitate to contact me. A copy of this Policy and any amendments thereto, will be provided to you annually.
Very truly yours,
Dave Fischer, CPA
Managing Director – Accountability Services PLLC
Revised March 1, 2022