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Privacy notice
What personal data we hold, why we hold it, how long we keep it and the rights you have. Written to be read rather than to be complied with.
What personal data we hold, why we hold it, how long we keep it and the rights you have. Written to be read rather than to be complied with.
The Trades Accountant is a trading name of Buzz Accounting Ltd. We are the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at hello@thetradesaccountant.co.uk.
When you use this website. If you send the contact form we receive your name, email address, your trade, your CIS position and whatever you write in the message. We use it to answer you. There is a hidden field in the form used only to catch automated submissions; if you are a person you will never see it.
The calculators on this site do not send us anything. They run in your browser. The figures you type are not transmitted, not stored and not visible to us.
If you become a client. We hold what we need to do the work and what the law requires us to hold: identification documents for anti-money-laundering purposes, your tax references, your accounting records, and the CIS returns and statements we prepare or reconcile.
For answering an enquiry, our legitimate interest in responding to somebody who has contacted us. For client work, performance of our contract with you. For anti-money-laundering identification and for keeping records HMRC may ask for, our legal obligations. For any marketing email, your consent — which you can withdraw at any time.
Enquiries that do not become clients: up to 24 months, then deleted. Client records: six years after the end of our engagement, which is what the tax rules require. CIS records specifically must be kept for at least three years after the end of the tax year they relate to, and we keep them for the same six years as everything else.
Our accounting and filing software, our email provider, and HMRC and Companies House where we file on your behalf. Our email provider is Brevo (Sendinblue SAS, France): when you fill in a form on this site, your name, email address and whatever you wrote in the message go to it so we can reply and send you anything you asked for. Brevo processes your data in the EU. We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anybody else's marketing.
You can ask us for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it where we are not required to keep it, object to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdraw consent to marketing. Email us and we will deal with it inside a month. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Our software providers are mainstream UK and EU business services. Where a provider processes data outside the UK we rely on the safeguards permitted by UK data protection law — either an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses. If you want to know which providers we use for your particular work, ask and we will tell you.
We do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not profile you. The calculators on this site do arithmetic in your browser; they do not score you, store anything or send anything anywhere.
We do not sell personal data. We do not share it so that somebody else can market to you. We do not add you to a mailing list because you sent us an enquiry — if you want the monthly email you have to ask for it, and every one of those emails has an unsubscribe link that works.
If personal data we hold is lost or disclosed in a way that presents a risk to you, we will tell the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours where the law requires it, and we will tell you where the risk to you is high. We would rather tell you about a problem than have you find out about it.
Email us first — most things are a misunderstanding and are fixed the same day. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your data you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. Complaining to them does not affect any other right you have.
This site sets no advertising cookies and no tracking pixels, and we do not sell or share anything about your visit with advertisers.
We do use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are actually being read. Nothing is loaded and no analytics cookie is set until you accept it on the banner — decline and the site works exactly the same, minus the counting. You can change your mind by clearing this site’s data in your browser, which removes the choice we stored and brings the banner back. Your IP address is anonymised before it reaches Google, and we have not enabled any of the advertising or personalisation features. Google acts as our processor for this and the data goes to servers outside the UK, covered by the safeguards described under where your data is held.
If we change how we handle personal data we will update this page. Where the change is material and you are a client, we will tell you rather than relying on you noticing.
One short email: what has changed in CIS and construction VAT, the dates coming up, and one number worth checking on your own invoices. No spam, unsubscribe any time.