Privacy Policy

PRIVACY NOTICE issued by Equifin Accountancy Ltd

Introduction

The Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA 2018”) and the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) impose certain legal obligations in connection with the processing of personal data.

Equifin Accountancy Ltd is a data controller within the meaning of the GDPR and we process personal data. The firm’s contact details are as follows:

Kanan Shah, Equifin Accountancy Ltd, 87 Kingshill Drive, Harrow, Middlesex, HA3 8QQ

Equifin Accountancy Ltd respects your right to privacy. We ask that you read this Privacy Notice carefully as it contains important information about what to expect when we collect personal information about you and how we will use your personal data.

Where we act as a data processor on behalf of a data controller (for example, when processing payroll), we provide an additional schedule setting out required information as part of that agreement. That additional schedule should be read in conjunction with this privacy notice.

The information we collect about you

When you do business with us, become a client of our firm, register for or attend any events or subscribe to our newsletters, or register an interest in any job vacancies with us, we collect some or all of the following personal information from you:

Date of Birth
Postal address, email address, and telephone number
Any information relevant to the matter upon which we may be instructed.
If you choose to submit a job or work experience placement application we will collect and hold the information that you provide in that application.
Occasionally we may receive information about you from other sources which we will add to the information which we already hold about you in order to help us provide the required services or comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, in particular regarding anti-money laundering.
IP addresses (internet protocol addresses) of visitors are logged for administration purposes. The IP address indicates the location of your computer on the Internet. This information may be used to provide statistical information about the users of our site. No individual user is identifiable from such information. Its purpose is to try to ensure that our site reflects the needs of our users. IP addresses may be used to track your session. We may use Cookies in our websites and apps. Equifin Accountancy Ltd may at certain times do require you to register to access any part of our website or application.
We do not collect sensitive information except where legally required as part of the recruitment process. Sensitive information includes data relating to race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or other similar beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, sexual life or criminal records.

The purposes for which we intend to process personal data

We intend to process personal data for the following purposes:

To enable us to supply contracted professional services to you as our client
To comply with statutory and/or regulatory obligations under relevant laws in force from time to time (e.g. the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (“MLR 2017”))
To comply with professional obligations to which we are subject as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.
To enable us to invoice you for our services and investigate/address any attendant fee disputes that may have arisen
To contact you about other services we provide which may be of interest to you if you have consented to us doing so
To monitor and improve the quality of services that we provide to you
To maintain our records for administrative purposes

The legal bases for our intended processing of personal data

Our intended processing of personal data has the following legal bases:

at the time you instructed us to act, you gave consent to our processing your personal data for the purposes listed above
the processing is necessary for the performance of our contract with you
the processing is necessary for compliance with legal obligations to which we are subject (e.g. MLR 2017)
the processing is necessary for the purposes of the following legitimate interests which we pursue: e.g. investigating /defending claims.

It is a requirement of our contract with you that you provide us with the personal data that we request. If you do not provide the information that we request, we may not be able to provide professional services to you. If this is the case, we will not be able to commence acting or will need to cease to act.

Where we wish to process details of individuals, sole traders or LLP’s who are not our current clients, we will only do so on the basis of consent provided.

Persons/organizations to whom we may give personal data

We may share your personal data with:

HMRC
any third parties with whom you require or permit us to correspond
subcontractors
an alternate appointed by us in the event of incapacity or death
tax insurance providers
professional indemnity insurers
our professional body (Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales) and/or the Office of Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervisors (OPBAS) in relation to practice assurance and/or the requirements of MLR 2017 (or any similar legislation)

If the law allows or requires us to do so, we may share your personal data with:

the police and law enforcement agencies
courts and tribunals
the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”).

We may need to share your personal data with the third parties identified above in order to comply with our legal obligations, including our legal obligations to you. If you ask us not to share your personal data with such third parties we may need to cease to act.

Outsource of personal data within Equifin Group:

We might outsource your data to other companies within the group in order to process and provide accounting and taxation and audit assistance and payroll services as per your requirements. We will ensure that we have a written agreement in place with the outsourcing team before sharing the data.

Retention of personal data

When acting as a data controller and in accordance with recognized good practice within the tax and accountancy sector we will retain all of our records relating to you as follows:

where tax returns have been prepared it is our policy to retain information for six years from the end of the tax year to which the information relates

where ad hoc advisory work has been undertaken it is our policy to retain information for six years from the date the business relationship ceased

where we have an ongoing client relationship, data which is needed for more than one year’s tax compliance (e.g. capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted to HMRC) is retained throughout the period of the relationship but will be deleted six years after the end of the business relationship unless you as our client ask us to retain it for a longer period.

Our contractual terms provide for the destruction of documents after six years and therefore agreement to the contractual terms is taken as agreement to the retention of records for this period, and to their destruction thereafter.

You are responsible for retaining information that we send to you (including details of capital gains base costs and claims and elections submitted) and this will be supplied in the form agreed between us. Documents and records relevant to your tax affairs are required by law to be retained by you as follows:

Individuals, trustees, and partnerships

with trading or rental income: five years and 10 months after the end of the tax year
otherwise: 22 months after the end of the tax year.

Companies, LLPs, and other corporate entities

six years from the end of the accounting period.

Where we act as a data processor as defined in DPA 2018, we will delete or return all personal data to the data controller as agreed with the controller at the termination of the contract.

Protection of personal data we hold about you.

We have put in place various security measures, both technical and organizational, to protect your personal data from loss, misuse, alternation, or destruction. Our security and privacy policies are regularly reviewed.

All Equifin, employees, employees of outsourcing Company and subcontractors have signed a confidentiality agreement and only authorized persons will have access to your personal data on a need-only basis.

Requesting personal data we hold about you (subject access requests)

You have a right to request access to your personal data that we hold. Such requests are known as ‘subject access requests’ (“SARs”).

Please provide all SARs in writing marked for the attention of ‘Kanan Shah’

To help us provide the information you want and deal with your request more quickly, you should include enough details to enable us to verify your identity and locate the relevant information. For example, you should tell us:

your date of birth
previous or other name(s) you have used
your previous addresses in the past five years
personal reference number(s) that we may have given you, for example, your national insurance number, your tax reference number or your VAT registration number
what type of information you want to know

If you do not have a national insurance number, you must send a copy of:

the back page of your passport or a copy of your driving license
a recent utility bill.

DPA 2018 requires that we comply with a SAR promptly and in any event within one month of receipt. There are, however, some circumstances in which the law allows us to refuse to provide access to personal data in response to a SAR (e.g. if you have previously made a similar request and there has been little or no change to the data since we complied with the original request).

We will not charge you for dealing with a SAR.

You can ask someone else to request information on your behalf – for example, a friend, relative or solicitor. We must have your authority to respond to a SAR made on your behalf. You can provide such authority by signing a letter which states that you authorize the person concerned to write to us for information about you, and/or receive our reply.

Where you are a data controller and we act for you as a data processor (e.g. by processing payroll), we will assist you with SARs on the same basis as is set out above.

Putting things right (the right to rectification)

You have a right to obtain the rectification of any inaccurate personal data concerning you that we hold. You also have a right to have any incomplete personal data that we hold about you completed. Should you become aware that any personal data that we hold about you is inaccurate and/or incomplete, please inform us immediately so we can correct and/or complete it.

Deleting your records (the right to erasure)

In certain circumstances, you have a right to have the personal data that we hold about you erased. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). If you would like your personal data to be erased, please inform us immediately and we will consider your request. In certain circumstances, we have the right to refuse to comply with an erasure request. If applicable, we will supply you with the reasons for refusing your request.

The right to restrict processing and the right to object

In certain circumstances, you have the right to ‘block’ or suppress the processing of personal data or to object to the processing of that information. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). Please inform us immediately if you want us to cease to process your information or you object to processing so that we can consider what action, if any, is appropriate.

Obtaining and reusing personal data (the right to data portability)

In certain circumstances, you have the right to be provided with the personal data that we hold about you in a machine-readable format, e.g. so that the data can easily be provided to a new professional adviser. Further information is available on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk).

The right to data portability only applies:

to personal data an individual has provided to a controller
where the processing is based on the individual’s consent or for the performance of a contract
when processing is carried out by automated means

We will respond to any data portability requests made to us without undue delay and within one month. We may extend the period by a further two months where the request is complex or a number of requests are received but we will inform you within one month of the receipt of the request and explain why the extension is necessary.

Withdrawal of consent

Where you have consented to our processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Please inform us immediately if you wish to withdraw your consent.

Please note:

the withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing
if you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to continue to provide services to you
even if you withdraw your consent, it may remain lawful for us to process your data on another legal basis (e.g. because we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data).

Automated decision-making

We do not intend to use automated decision-making in relation to your personal data.

We may amend this privacy notice from time to time. If we do so, we will supply you with and/or otherwise make available to you a copy of the amended privacy notice. This Privacy policy was last updated in May 2018.

Complaints

If you have requested details of the information we hold about you and you are not happy with our response, or you think we have not complied with the GDPR or DPA 2018 in some other way, you can complain to us. Please send any complaints to: