Privacy Policy

Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) Limited
Version of 12 January 2023

 

Our contact details

Company name

Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) Limited

Company number

11199343

Registration location

England and Wales

Address

804 Merlin Park

Ringtail Road

Ormskirk

L40 8JY

United Kingdom

Phone number

(+44) 01704 891 676

Email address

info@stseurope.co.uk

Introduction

This notice describes how we collect and use personal data about you, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and any other relevant data protection laws or legislation in the UK, which are updated from time to time.

For the purpose of the UK’s data protection legislation and this notice, Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) is the data controller when providing professional services directly to our clients. Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) is the data processor when providing professional services to a third party (for example a solicitor) on behalf of their client(s).

As a data controller we are responsible for deciding how we use and process your personal data. We are required under the relevant legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

This policy doesn’t apply to information about our employees or shareholders.

Type of personal data collected

We collect personal data in the form of:

  • Contact details.
  • Business activities.
  • Family information.
  • Income, taxation and other financial-related details.
  • Investments and other financial interests.
  • Employment details.
  • Other relevant information provided to us by you or third parties in the course of a professional engagement.

Purpose for processing personal data

We process personal data in the following circumstances:

  1. General communications

Purpose:

This covers cases where you communicate with us and the communication is not required in the course of providing professional services. We will use your personal data in order to deal with your communication. General communications could be, but are not limited, to any of the following examples where you:

  • Request information about the professional services we provide.
  • Request a quote for our professional services.
  • Enquire about working with us.
  • Register for an event.
  • Make a complaint.
  • Respond to a survey.

Data processed:

When you communicate with us, you may provide personal data to us such as your name, address, and other contact details. Such personal data will be collected when you submit a contact us request on our website, or you contact us via email, telephone, post or social media.

Legal basis:

Consent, contractual obligations, legitimate interests.

  1. In the course of providing professional services

Purpose:

This covers personal data which is necessary for us to process in order for us to dispense our services to you under the terms of an engagement letter or otherwise engagement.

Data processed:

Such data is provided either by you as the client, by a third party at your request (for example where you instruct your bank or other advisors to send us documents), or by a third party on behalf as you as their client. Depending on the type of engagement entered into we will collect and process the following type of personal data:

  • Contact details.
  • Business activities.
  • Family information.
  • Income, taxation and other financial-related details.
  • Investments and other financial interests.
  • Employment details.
  • Other relevant information provided to us by you or third parties in the course of a professional engagement.

Legal basis:

Consent, Contractual obligations, legitimate interests.

  1. Usage information we collect on our website

Purpose:

To administer, maintain, develop and improve our website and professional services, we use cookies and analytics tools on our website.

Data processed:

We use Google Analytics to provide information to us about how users interact with our website. Google Analytics is a third-party information storage system that records information about the pages you visit, the length of time you were on specific pages and the website in general, how you arrived at the site and what you clicked on when you were there. Google Analytics processes your IP address, however this is no made available to us, we only see the data from an aggregated point of view. In addition to Google Analytics we use cookies on our website, which you can opt out of at any time using the preferences on our website. For more information please see our cookie policy which is available on our website (www.stseurope.co.uk).

Legal basis:

Consent, legitimate interests.

  1. Obligations

Purpose:

We are required to process personal data to:

  • Fulfil our obligations under relevant laws in force from time to time, for example money laundering regulations.
  • Use in the investigation/defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings and legal proceedings.

Data processed:

Data which has been collected in the course of a professional engagement, this may include, but is not limited to:

  • Contact details.
  • Business activities.
  • Family information.
  • Income, taxation and other financial-related details.
  • Investments and other financial interests.
  • Employment details.
  • Other relevant information provided to us by you or third parties in the course of a professional engagement.

Legal basis:

Legal obligations, legitimate interests.

  1. Marketing

Purpose:

We process personal data to fulfil our marketing requirements. Such processing will include, but is not limited to, the following examples:

  • Contacting you about services we provide which may be of interest.
  • Facilitating the hosting of events.
  • Seeking your thoughts and opinions on the services we provide.

Data processed:

To fulfil our marketing requirements we will process personal information in the form of contact details, including to your name, address, email, phone number, and other contact details. Such personal data will be collected when you submit a contact us request on our website, or you contact us via email, telephone, post, social media, or since acquiring our professional services previously.

Legal basis:

Legitimate interests.

Legal basis for processing

Under data protection laws, we are required to have a legal basis to process your personal information. These are mentioned in the previous section. Below are the definitions for each of the lawful bases we rely on:

Consent

To provide information and take actions in relation to services which you have opted-in to receive.

Contractual obligations

The processing is necessary for a contract the data controller has with the individual, or because the individual has asked the data controller to take specific steps before entering into a contract (for example asking for a quote).

Legal obligations

The processing is necessary for the data controller to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).

Legitimate interests

The processing is necessary for the legitimate interests of the data controller or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.

A note on consent

Where consent is required to process certain types of your personal data, it must be clearly given. Where you have given consent for Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) to process your personal data you may withdraw consent at any time by emailing info@stseurope.co.uk. We will cease processing your data based on that consent but this does not affect any processing we have undertaken at any time before withdrawal.

If you have given consent for your details to be passed to a third party (as described in the following section) your data may already have been used by them to respond to your request before we can action your consent withdrawal. In this event, you will need to contact them to withdraw your consent to their use of your personal data.

Disclosure to third parties

In the course of providing professional services to you, we may be required to pass on your information in the following circumstances:

  • At your request – for example where you ask us to provide financial data to your accountant, solicitor or other advisor. We will only do this at your request and with your consent.
  • When we are required to submit to HMRC – where we are required to submit tax returns or tax investigation reports to HMRC as agreed in the terms of the engagement.
  • As part of a contract – occasionally, our work may require us to pass your information to a third-party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing the services to you. Where we are required to provide your personal data in this way, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have contracts in place that requires them to keep information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.
  • To fulfil our legal obligations – as previously discussed, from time to time we may be required to share your personal information to fulfil our obligations under relevant laws in force, or in the investigation/defence of potential complaints, disciplinary proceedings or legal proceedings.

Where we store your personal data

Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) has robust security measures to protect your personal data. We use strict procedures and security features designed to prevent any unauthorised access to your data that we hold, such as encryption and pseudonymisation. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this policy.

International Transfers

All information you provide to us is stored securely within the EU, and not transferred outside the EEA unless you have specifically requested, and consented, for us to make such a transfer of data. Where we transfer your data outside of the EEA, we will ensure that safeguards are in place to provide similar degree of protection is available to protect it. This may include contractual protections in place with our service providers or transferring your data to countries or parties which are recognised as providing suitable protection by the UK data protection legislation. 

How long we keep your personal data

Where an engagement of professional services has occurred, we only keep your data as long as it is necessary for the services to be provided to you. Once the engagement is completed, we give the you the option of us sending the data back to you, or us destroying the data.

Where legitimate interests are involved, for example in the case of marketing, we will keep your data as long as we deem it still in our legitimate interests.

Your rights as a data subject

Under UK data protection law, you have the following rights:

Right to access

You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.

Right to rectification

You have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.

Right to erasure

In certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.

Right to restrict processing

Where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.

Right to portability

In certain circumstances you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.

Right to object

You have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing, automated processing or profiling.

Right to complain

You have the right to complain as outlined in the next section of this privacy policy

Please email info@stseurope.co.uk if you have any queries regarding your rights. You can exercise your rights as set out above by emailing info@stseurope.co.uk.

If you want to make a complaint

If you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed by Specialist Taxation Services (Europe) Limited (or any third parties as described above), or how your complaint has been handled, in the first instance please email your concerns to info@stseurope.co.uk.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the UK supervisory authority which is the Information Commissioner’s Office and can be contacted via the details at www.ico.org.uk.