Charanek Taxes & Accounting operates this website from Calgary, Alberta. This policy explains what personal information the site collects, why it is collected, who else can see it, and how long it is kept.
It covers the website. Information you provide once an engagement is underway is governed by the engagement letter and by the confidentiality obligations that come with tax and bookkeeping work.
Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) applies to this practice. Where information crosses a provincial or national border — which it does, since some service providers operate outside Alberta — the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies as well.
What is collected
What you type into a form. The contact form collects your name, email address, the service you selected and your message, plus your business name and phone number if you choose to give them. The shorter enquiry form on service and fee pages collects your name, email address, an optional phone number, and which engagement you are asking about. Both record whether you ticked the marketing consent box.
Both forms also note the moment the page loaded and include a field hidden from view. Neither tells us anything about you: a submission that arrives faster than a person could type, or that fills in a field only an automated script would see, is discarded as spam.
What your browser sends. Ordinary web request data — IP address, browser and device type, the page requested, the page you arrived from — is processed by the hosting provider in the course of serving the site and kept in short-lived operational logs.
Analytics. The site uses Visitors (visitors.now) to count and understand traffic. It sets no cookies, and its operator states that it collects no personal information from website visitors and that analytics data is processed and stored in the European Union. It does not run at all for visitors whose browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal.
Beyond counting pages, it records how they are used — which links and buttons get followed, and whether a form was sent successfully. Nothing you type goes to it: not your name, email address, telephone number, message, or any figure you enter.
No cookies, no advertising. This site sets no cookies of its own, and there are no advertising pixels, no social media trackers and no cross-site profiling. Nothing here follows you to another website.
Why it is collected
To answer your enquiry, to work out whether this practice can take the work on, and to prepare a scope and a fee if it can. Analytics and server logs are used to keep the site working and to see which pages are worth writing more of.
If you tick the marketing consent box, your email address is also used to send occasional notes on deadlines and tax changes. That consent is separate from your enquiry, is never a condition of getting in touch, and can be withdrawn at any time — every such message carries a working unsubscribe link, and withdrawal takes effect promptly.
Nothing is sold. Nothing is shared for anyone else's marketing.
Who else can see it
Three service providers process information on this practice's behalf, each limited to what its function requires:
- Vercel — hosts the website, in the United States.
- Fastmail — carries form submissions and correspondence by email. Fastmail is an Australian company; its mail servers are in the United States.
- Visitors — analytics, processed and stored in the European Union.
Beyond those, personal information is disclosed only where the law requires it, or where you ask for it to be shared.
Information held outside Canada
As the list above shows, information handled by this site is stored and processed outside Alberta and outside Canada. While it is there it is subject to the laws of that country, and may be accessible to that country's courts and law enforcement under their own legal processes. This is set out here because PIPA requires it to be; there is no way to run an ordinary website and email service without it being true.
How long it is kept
- Enquiries that do not become engagements — 24 months, then deleted. Long enough to recognise you if you come back a season later; not indefinite.
- Marketing consent records — while you are subscribed, and for three years after you unsubscribe, because Canada's anti-spam legislation requires proof of consent to be kept.
- Client records — at least six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, as tax record-keeping obligations require, and longer where a return remains open to review.
- Server logs and analytics — short-lived, and held by the providers named above under their own retention schedules.
Your rights
You may ask what personal information this practice holds about you, ask for a copy of it, ask for anything inaccurate to be corrected, and ask for it to be deleted where there is no legal or professional obligation to keep it. You may also withdraw marketing consent at any time without it affecting anything else.
Write to mo@charanek.ca. A response follows within 45 days, the period PIPA allows, and usually sooner. There is no charge for a straightforward request.
If you are not satisfied with the response, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, or to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Keeping it safe
Access is limited to the people who need it to do the work. The site is served over HTTPS, and the providers named above encrypt data in transit and at rest. No system is perfect: if a breach occurs that creates a real risk of significant harm, affected individuals and the Alberta Commissioner will be notified, as the law requires.
Please do not send documents through this site
The forms here are for getting in touch, not for filing. Do not send your social insurance number, account numbers, slips or tax documents through them. Once you are a client, a secure channel is set up for exchanging records.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the revised version is posted here and the date at the top is updated. A material change to how information is handled will be communicated directly to the people it affects.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about how your information is handled, go to mo@charanek.ca.