Privacy

Keeping your information confidential and secure is our top priority.  Your confidence in us is very important and you can trust that the information you provide will remain protected.

Corvid Tax, LLC collects personal financial information from our clients and prospective clients for the purpose of providing tax and other related services.  We do not share this information with any outside person, government agency or company without the client's consent or as required by law.  Information provided by prospective clients, who don't ultimately hire us, is not shared and will be deleted or destroyed.  

Corvid Tax, LLC handles all information you provide with the utmost confidentiality and care. Access to nonpublic personal information about you is restricted to members of Corvid Tax who need to know this information in order to complete the work you have hired us to accomplish. Corvid Tax maintains physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards which comply with or exceed generally accepted federal and state regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information.

Absent a specific exception, Treas. Reg. section 301.7216 generally prohibits the disclosure or use of tax  information without the client’s explicit, written consent. In general, a “disclosure” of information involves a disclosure by the preparer of a client’s return information to a third party.

Under section 7216, a tax return preparer is subject to a criminal penalty for “knowingly or recklessly” disclosing or using tax return information. Each violation of section 7216 could result in a fine of up to $1,000 or one year imprisonment, or both. Internal Revenue Code section 6713, the companion civil penalty, imposes a $250 penalty on a preparer for each prohibited disclosure or use of the return information.

Because of these rules we do not provide copies of tax returns or other information to any other third party without signed authorization from the client.

Best Practices For Sending Info to Corvid Tax:

1) You received a letter from the IRS or State and want us to take a look at it.

• Best:  Take a picture of the first page with your smartphone and send it to us via iMessage* (iphone) or using WhatsApp secure messaging app.  Make sure you get the entire letter in the picture. We can usually judge the importance of the letter based on the first page and will respond if we need you to send the rest.
• Also Good:  Scan the letter to your computer and share it with us using our encrypted Dropbox link (no account required), or with Google Drive or Microsoft 365 OneDrive (account required).  After you upload make sure to call or text to confirm we received it.
• Less Secure: Sending photo using normal text messaging (SMS), Fax Machine, Scanning and sending over email.  These methods are not encrypted and could be intercepted.  If you use one of these methods you should obscure private information like Social Security Numbers, etc that may appear on the letter.  

2) Sending forms and other confidential tax information.

• Best:  Scan and save documents to your computer and share using Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive.  
  
• Best:  Scan and save documents to a USB drive or CD and send to us via Priority Mail, UPS or FedEx.  Password protection on the disk is recommended.
• Also Good:  Send paper copies of your documents via Priority Mail, UPS or FedEx. 
• Less Secure:  Scanning and sending over email or sending via Fax Machine.
• Not Recommended: Mailing or dropping off original documents and not keeping copies.

* Apple iMessage:  When your iphone sends over iMessage the send button and your message will show up in blue.  We advise that you send the non-private part of your message first ( "can you look at this?"), make sure iMessage is working, then send the picture or any other non-public information.  If your message is green or says "sent as a text message" then iMessage isn't working and your text is not encrypted.

** Our Mail is received by a local mailbox store: Alki Mail & Dispatch.  All mail is secured in a locked mailbox until we pick it up.  Larger packages are kept safe behind the counter.  If you would like to drop off information for us and don't have an appointment, it is safe and acceptable to leave it for us there during their normal business hours.  They also serve coffee and snacks and have a nice gift shop.