Quartax Accounting Corporation ("Quartax", "we", "us") provides bookkeeping, payroll and tax services, so we handle sensitive personal and financial information every day. This policy explains what we collect, why, how we protect it, and the choices you have. It applies to our website and to the services we provide.
1. Information we collect
- When you contact us: your name, email, phone number, the service you are interested in and anything you write in your message.
- When you become a client: information needed to deliver the service, which may include your Social Insurance Number or business number, income and tax slips, bank and credit card statements, payroll and employee information, and records from your accounting software.
- When you use our website: basic usage data through Google Analytics, such as pages visited, device type, approximate location (city level) and how you arrived at the site. This data does not identify you by name.
Please do not send your SIN, account numbers or tax documents through our website form. We will give you a secure way to share them.
2. How we use it
- To respond to your inquiry and prepare a proposal.
- To deliver the services you engage us for, including preparing and filing returns with the Canada Revenue Agency and other government bodies on your behalf.
- To communicate with you about your file, deadlines and fees.
- To meet our legal, tax and professional record keeping obligations.
- To understand how our website is used so we can improve it.
We do not sell personal information. We do not use client financial information for marketing.
3. Consent
By contacting us or engaging our services, you consent to us collecting and using your information for the purposes above. For clients, the specific scope is also set out in your engagement letter. You can withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual limits. Withdrawing consent may mean we cannot continue to provide a service.
4. Who we share it with
We share information only as needed to provide our services:
- Government bodies such as the Canada Revenue Agency, the Ontario Ministry of Finance and WSIB, when filing or corresponding on your behalf with your authorization.
- Service providers that help us operate, such as accounting and payroll software (for example QuickBooks Online or Xero), email and cloud storage providers, secure file sharing tools, our website form processor (Web3Forms) and Google Analytics. Some of these providers may store data on servers outside Canada, where it may be subject to the laws of those countries.
- Others when required by law, for example in response to a valid legal demand.
5. How we protect it
We use safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including password protected accounts, secure file sharing and access limited to the people working on your file. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect your information and review our practices regularly.
6. How long we keep it
We keep client records for as long as needed to provide our services and to meet legal and professional retention requirements, generally at least six years after the end of the tax year they relate to. Website inquiries that do not become engagements are deleted after 24 months. When information is no longer needed, we securely destroy or anonymize it.
7. Your rights
You can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, or ask questions about how it is handled. Contact our privacy officer below. We respond within 30 days.
8. Cookies and analytics
Our website uses Google Analytics cookies to measure visits. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, or install the Google Analytics opt out browser add on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. The site works normally without them.
9. Contact our privacy officer
Privacy Officer
Quartax Accounting Corporation
55 Village Centre Pl, Mississauga ON L4Z 1V9
info@quartaxaccounting.ca
416 985 6755
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca.
10. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it last changed.