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Our Privacy Policy

​Last updated January 14, 2025

 

Our Privacy Policy, Compliance with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Public Law 106-102 (FTC 16 CFR Part 313)

 

OVERVIEW
The privacy of your client information is important to us, and we maintain professional standards of confidentiality to uphold the trust extended to us. That said, we are required to formally notify you of our privacy policy.


This privacy notice for Guardian CPA, LLC ("Company," "we," "us," or "our"), describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share ("process") your information when you use our services ("Services"). When all is said, our firm engages clients in tax services, financial accounting/bookkeeping, advisory tax planning, and other services that require personal information. Accordingly, our firm uses technologies and software to facilitate services and communications with our clients.

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We collect nonpublic personal and/or business information provided to us by you, or a designated representative, or obtained by us with your authorization. This information may come from various sources and formats (hardcopy or electronic), including but not limited to: our website (i.e. appointments), financial statements, personal interviews, worksheets, tax organizers, and other documents necessary to provide professional financial or business services.

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With today's technologies, we do not control the software providers nor do we possess the in depth technical knowledge to evaluate all software programs etc.; as such, our firm evaluates and relies on security certificates and reputations of providers before utilizing these providers in our operations as it is our intent to safeguard client personal information and it is NOT our intent or practice to disclose any nonpublic information about our clients, or former clients, to anyone, except as permitted or required by law, or when necessary to process transactions requested by clients.


Questions or concerns? Reading this privacy notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. If you still have any questions or concerns, please contact us at: support@guardiancpas.com.


KEY POINTS

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1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and Services, when you participate in activities related to Service engagements (i.e. sharing documents or access to online records, including through QuickBooks or other software), or otherwise when you contact us.


Personal Information Provided by You. The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. The personal information we collect may include the following:

  • names

  • phone numbers

  • email addresses

  • addresses

  • contact preferences

  • contact or authentication data

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Sensitive Information. When necessary, with your consent or as otherwise permitted by applicable law, we process the following categories of sensitive information:

  • financial and tax data

  • social security numbers, birthdates, or other government identifiers

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All personal and sensitive information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information as it pertains to engaged serviced our company provides.
 

Other non-personal data:
•    Log and Usage Data. Log and usage data is service-related, diagnostic, usage, and performance information our servers automatically collect when you access or use our Services and which we record in log files. Depending on how you interact with us, this log data may include your IP address, device information, browser type, and settings and information about your activity in the Services (such as the date/time stamps associated with your usage, pages and files viewed, searches, and other actions you take such as which features you use), device event information (such as system activity, error reports (sometimes called "crash dumps"), and hardware settings). This information does not reveal your specific identity (like your name or contact information).


Information collected from other sources:
We may collect limited data from public databases, and other outside sources. In order to enhance our ability to provide relevant marketing, offers, and services to you and update our records, we may obtain information about you from other sources, such as public databases. The purpose of such activity is to enable existing service engagements or in the exercise of communicating and offering other business services provided by our firm.


2. HOW DO WE PROCESS YOUR INFORMATION?
We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, including:

  • To facilitate services with a client or on the client's behalf. We process your information to provide, improve, protect, and administer our Services, and to manage communicates with you.

  • To identify usage trends. We may process information about how you use our Services to better understand how they are being used so we can improve them.

  • To comply with our legal obligations. We may process your information to comply with our legal obligations, respond to legal requests, and exercise, establish, or defend our legal rights.

 

Whatever the situation, we seek to protect and keep our clients interests in mind and it is a primary focus to maintain trust with our clients.


3. WHEN AND WITH WHOM DO WE RECEIVE OR SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We may need to share your personal information in the following situations:

  • Third party sent information. We may receive information from third party transmissions initiated by our clients, third party software utilized by our practice to carryout firm activities, client's other financial partners, and other outside sources.

  • To comply with our legal obligations. We may share your information to comply with legal obligations, and respond to legal requests by enforceable orders of the court or related government departments.

  • Explicit Consent. We may share or transfer your information to authorized third parties with a client's written form of consent on file.

  • Business Transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.

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4. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?
We retain records related to the professional services we provide in compliance to accounting and government standards. We will only keep your personal information for as long as a current business relationship exists, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). Unless required by law, when we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, information may be stored in backup archives); information may be retained with business records but will NOT be sold to marketing companies and the like as this does not match with our firm's values.


5. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?
We have implemented appropriate and reasonable physical, technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. Also, we restrict access to nonpublic information about clients within our firm to only those who need to know in performance of professional services. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that computer malware/viruses/etc, or hackers, cybercriminals, and other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, modify, or corrupt your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, and services are provided to encrypt, store, backup, or otherwise safeguard exchanges, retention by our firm and transmission of personal information to and from our firm is at your own risk. We advise clients to keep their own records, and to access and share information within a secure environment.


6. DO WE COLLECT INFORMATION FROM MINORS?
We do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children (age 17 and younger). By using our Services, you represent that you are an adult with mental capacity to act or engage in services, or that you are the parent or guardian or authorized representative of such a minor or person of limited competence and consent to such person’s use of the Services; as such, the consent includes the use of personal or sensitive non-public information. If we learn that personal information from minors or person's of limited competence has been collected without consent or authorization, we will take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records.


7. WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?
Withdrawing your consent: If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent depending on the applicable law, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section "HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?" below.


Note: withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal nor, when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.


Opting out of marketing and promotional communications: You can unsubscribe from our marketing and promotional communications at any time by contacting us using the details provided in the section " HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?" below. You will then be removed from our firm's marketing activities. However, we may still communicate with you — for example, to send you service-related messages that are necessary for the administration and use of your account, to respond to service requests or existing business engagements, or for other non-marketing purposes.


8. HOW CAN YOU REVIEW, UPDATE, OR DELETE THE DATA WE COLLECT FROM YOU?
You may request a listing of the personal information we have in our records, or request changes to that information, including a request to delete said information; in some cases, information may not be deleted but rather archived and not used in further business activities as required to remain legally compliant (such as in the retention of firm prepared tax returns). To request to review, update, or delete your personal information, please contact us.


9. USE OF THIRD-PARTY SERVICES
We may choose to use various third-party services that use their own terms and privacy agreements. By using these services, Guardian CPA, LLC is not responsible for information collected by these third parties. We may choose to utilize, embed, recommend, and/or link various other websites, files, and/or services. These services are enabling to our client and business interactions and while due diligence by our firm was used in the investigation of these third parties to enable business interactions and provide assurance of protecting client personal information, we are not responsible for the content provided by these entities, nor the content you choose to provide to them. By using these services, you are agreeing to their terms of service and privacy policies, and acknowledging that Guardian CPA, LLC is not responsible for any consequences of using their services, whether that be good or bad. An examples of a third party service that interacts with some firm provided services include: Intuit and QuickBooks.


10. DO WE MAKE UPDATES TO THIS NOTICE?
We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Revised" date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We reserve the right to update the Privacy Policy periodically, without notice. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.


11. HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?
If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may email us at support@guardiancpas.com or by mailing us at:


Guardian CPA, LLC
1852 E Melwood St
Meridian ID, 83642

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