Privacy, Disclaimer and Terms | Seat Tax & Consulting

What this site collects

Only what you choose to send, plus ordinary hosting data.

What you type into the contact form. Your name, email, phone, preferred contact method, which option sounds like you, how you heard about the firm, and whatever you write in the message box, plus the page you sent it from. Submissions are stored with the site host (Netlify Forms) and delivered to the firm by email, and are used to answer you. The form asks you not to send tax documents or case details, and you should not: a secure portal is provided once we are engaged.
What you type into the checklist form. Your first name and email. It is stored the same way, delivered to the firm by email, and used to give you the checklist. You are not added to a mailing list.
Ordinary web hosting data. The site is hosted on Netlify, which records standard request data such as pages viewed, referring site, browser and device type. It is aggregate traffic information, not a profile of you, and it is not tied to your name. The site's fonts load from Google Fonts, so your browser's request (including your IP address) reaches Google when a page loads.

This site does not run advertising trackers, does not sell or rent information to anyone, and does not send your details to third parties for their own marketing.

Tax return information is a separate matter, and a stricter one.

Once you are a client, what you give us is not governed by a privacy policy. It is governed by federal criminal law.

Internal Revenue Code § 7216 makes it a crime for a tax return preparer to knowingly or recklessly disclose or use tax return information for any purpose other than preparing the return, unless the taxpayer has consented in writing first. Penalties run to a fine and up to a year in prison. § 6713 adds a civil penalty on top of it.

In practice that means we do not use your return information to market anything to you, we do not share it with a referral partner, a lender or anyone else, and we do not use it for any purpose outside the engagement, unless you have signed a specific consent that says what is being disclosed, to whom, and why. Consent is never a condition of being represented.

Separately, everything discussed before an engagement is treated as confidential, and conflicts are checked before any case detail is discussed.

Service providers who need it to do their job, and no one else.

Running a practice takes software. The firm uses vendors for bookkeeping, practice management, tax preparation, email, telephony and scheduling, and those vendors necessarily process client information in order to provide the service. Each is bound by its own contractual confidentiality and security obligations, and none of them is permitted to use the information for their own purposes.

The firm also uses artificial-intelligence tools for research and drafting, under its written security plan. Social Security numbers, account numbers and dates of birth are never entered into them, client information is de-identified, the providers may not use the firm's data to train their models, and nothing an AI tool produces is relied on or sent to you until a credentialed professional has reviewed it. AI features built into the firm's approved software work within that software's own security, and are not permitted to use your information to train their models.

Beyond that, information is disclosed only where you have authorized it in writing, or where the firm is legally compelled: a court order, a subpoena, or a lawful demand we cannot resist. If that ever happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

How it is kept

The firm maintains a Written Information Security Plan, as the IRS requires of return preparers, and follows the FTC Safeguards Rule. Client files are kept in encrypted systems protected by multi-factor authentication, and backed up daily to encrypted storage. Access is limited to the people working your matter.

Records are retained for as long as professional standards and the applicable statutes of limitation require, and then disposed of securely.

No system is perfect, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What we can tell you is what the safeguards are and who has access.

Your choices

You can ask what we hold. Ask, and we will tell you what is on file and provide a copy of what is yours.
You can correct it. If something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
You can ask us to delete it, subject to the records we are professionally and legally required to keep.
You can withdraw a consent you previously gave under § 7216, going forward.
You can decline cookies in your browser settings. The site works without them.

Washington residents, and residents of other states with their own privacy statutes, have whatever additional rights those laws provide. Ask and we will honor them.

Terms of use

This site is information, not advice. Everything here describes the firm and its services in general terms. It is not tax, legal or accounting advice, it is not written for your situation, and it should not be relied on as a substitute for engaging someone to look at your actual facts.
Reading it does not make you a client. Sending the contact form does not either. A client relationship begins only when a written engagement letter is signed by both sides.
Third-party links. Where this site links to irs.gov or another outside source, that source is theirs and not ours. We link because the underlying document is worth reading; we do not control what it says next month.

Questions about any of this?

Ask. A privacy policy that no one will explain is not worth much. Get in touch.

What we collect, what we do with it, and what this site is not.