Privacy Policy

We collect information from you when you contact us with a tax query and when you complete our online contact form. We also collect information when you voluntarily complete surveys, make a direct donation and provide feedback. Website usage information is collected using cookies.

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address and relevant information regarding your tax query.

We will process your data on the basis that it is in our legitimate interests to do so in order to answer your query. We may, on occasion, have reason to process ‘special category data‘ and when that is the case, the legal basis for processing this data is consent and we will ask if we can make a note on the database that consent was received.

Personal details

We collect information about you to record details of your tax issues and the advice given. This is useful for us to keep so that we can give you the best support and advice, particularly if you call back or need further advice; it may involve sharing some information with colleagues so advice can be reviewed or for a second opinion. On occasion clients give us sensitive information, for instance about their physical or mental health. Where this is relevant to our advice we include this on the record.

Information provided by you to your adviser will not be disclosed to anyone unconnected with Tax Help unless you have given your consent. There are three exceptions:

• Where Tax Help has an overriding legal right or duty to disclose information. In particular, your adviser may have a legal duty under the Proceeds of Crime Act to report any suspicions of criminal activity to the appropriate authority.
• Where disclosure is necessary for the purposes of independent quality review or for our insurers.  Those involved are themselves required to keep the details confidential.
• Where we are seriously concerned about the well-being of a client.

If we need to share your details with a third party in order to deal with your tax problem, we will ask for your consent before doing so and will record this consent.

Documents

On occasion it will be necessary for advisers to take your papers and documents away with them. The underlying principle here is that all papers received or generated in the course of Tax Help work remain the property of the client and/or Tax Help and will be returned to you when the adviser has finished working with them.

General data for monitoring purposes

We keep information about problems presented to us for statistical and auditing purposes, so that we can analyse patterns of problems people are having with the tax system. No individuals can be identified though reports based on this data as it is anonymised.

Donations

To enable us to process direct donations (such as by standing order or direct debit) we may need to collect basic payment information from you. If you are eligible for UK Gift Aid, we may also ask you to confirm your UK home address.

When you are using our secure online donation pages such as Virgin Money Giving, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

We keep client records for a minimum of seven years. You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please email GDPR@taxvol.org.uk or write to us at the address below. There will be no charge for this service.

We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is accurate.

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity.

For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.

Our website may contain links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website, so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This policy was last updated on 01.04.2018..