Privacy Policy & Taxpayer Data Protection

1. Statutory Secrecy under Section 216

Under Section 216 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, all particulars contained in any statement or document produced by a taxpayer, or in any evidence given or affidavit or deposition made in the course of any proceedings under the Ordinance, are treated as confidential. Taxpert, its advocates, chartered accountants, and staff observe strict professional secrecy and legal privilege regarding all financial records entrusted to our care.

2. Nature of Information Collected

To deliver professional tax advisory, income tax return filing, sales tax compliance, and appellate representation, we collect only necessary commercial and personal records, including:

• Tax identification records: Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC), National Tax Number (NTN), Sales Tax Registration Number (STRN), and SECP corporate profiles.
• Financial documentation: Commercial bank account statements, salary certificates, withholding deduction certificates (Section 164), audited financial statements, and general ledgers.
• Statutory notices & orders: Show-cause notices under Sections 111, 121, 122, and 177, assessment orders, and appellate memos.
• Digital credentials: FBR Iris 2.0 and e-FBR electronic access pins provided specifically for filing authorization under Power of Attorney.

3. Purpose of Data Processing

All collected information is utilized strictly for lawful professional purposes:

• Preparation, reconciliation, and electronic submission of annual income tax returns and Section 116 wealth statements.
• Computation of monthly sales tax liabilities, Annexure-C invoices, and provincial indirect tax compliance.
• Formulation of legal replies and defense memos before assessing officers, Commissioner (Appeals), and Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue (ATIR).
• Corporate restructuring, advance ruling drafting, and M&A tax due diligence.

4. Security Controls & Data Encryption

Taxpert protects client records against unauthorised access, loss or alteration. Website forms are sent over encrypted HTTPS connections. In our client-management system, enquiry messages, internal notes and phone numbers are encrypted at rest, staff access is limited by role (advisors see only the clients assigned to them), sign-ins can require two-factor authentication, and access to records is logged.

5. Non-Disclosure & Third-Party Restrictions

We do not sell, rent, commercialize, or disclose client personal or financial information to any commercial third party, marketing agency, or lead generator. Disclosures are made exclusively to:

• Statutory revenue authorities (Federal Board of Revenue, Sindh Revenue Board, Punjab Revenue Authority, SECP) pursuant to express client Power of Attorney.
• Judicial and appellate tribunals (CIR Appeals, ATIR, High Courts) during formal legal representation.
• Law enforcement agencies strictly when compelled by a valid judicial court order under Pakistani law.

6. Statutory Record Retention Period

Under Section 174 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and Section 22 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, taxpayers are required to maintain books of accounts, documents, and records for a statutory minimum period of six years from the end of the tax year to which they relate. Taxpert retains engagement records in compliance with these statutory limitations to defend clients during subsequent tax audit cycles.

7. Privacy Officer Contact

For inquiries regarding your personal data, retention status, or revocation of filing credentials, please direct formal written correspondence to:

Data Protection Counsel
Taxpert Chambers, House # 10, Block-06, P.E.C.H.S., Razi Road,
Opposite Madina Masjid, Karachi, Pakistan.
Email: privacy@taxpert.com.pk

8. Website enquiries, chat and email

When you use this website we collect only what is needed to respond to you:

• Consultation and contact forms: your name, email, phone number, optional organisation, the service you are interested in and your message. These create a record in our client-management system so an advisor can respond and follow up.
• Chat assistant (“Ask Taxpert”): your messages are answered only from our reviewed library. To follow the conversation (for example, a follow-up question), we keep the chat on our servers in encrypted form, with email addresses, phone numbers and ID numbers removed from the stored transcript, and we keep an anonymous copy of each question to find gaps in our answers. Your browser keeps a random conversation key and the visible messages in this tab only (session storage), which are cleared when you close the tab. No IP address is stored with the chat. Chats that do not lead to an enquiry are deleted after 90 days. If you choose to leave your details in the chat, we save your name, email, optional phone and organisation, the service, your description, your preferred contact method and your consent choices in our client-management system together with the chat, so an advisor can follow up.
• Popup forms: some pages may show a short message (popup) with an optional form. If you fill it in and tick the consent box, we store the details you enter (for example your name, email or phone), the page you were on and the time, in encrypted form, so our team can contact you. These are deleted after 24 months, or earlier if you ask. We count how often each popup is shown, clicked and closed as daily totals only; no individual visitor is tracked.
• Email preferences: whether you have opted in to deadline reminders, tax updates and newsletters, or occasion greetings, together with a record of when and how you gave or withdrew consent.
• Optional personal dates: if you choose to give us your birthday or wedding anniversary (day and month only), we use it solely to send greetings you have opted in to. We never guess or infer these dates.

Please do not send CNIC numbers, passwords, bank details or tax documents through website forms or chat. An advisor will arrange a secure way to share documents when needed.

Why we use this information: to respond to your enquiry and take steps you ask for before an engagement; to provide services you engage us for; to send optional emails only where you have consented; and, in our legitimate interest, to keep our systems secure and improve our answers. General information on this website and in our emails is not personalised tax advice.

9. Email preferences, consent and unsubscribing

• Service emails (for example, confirming your enquiry or appointment, or requesting documents for a matter you have instructed us on) are sent because they are necessary for the service you asked for.
• Tax deadline reminders, tax updates and newsletters, and occasion greetings (birthdays, anniversaries, Eid and national days) are sent only if you separately opt in. Ticking or leaving these boxes does not affect our reply to your enquiry.
• Every optional email contains an unsubscribe link and a link to manage your preferences. Unsubscribing takes effect immediately. We keep a suppression record so that you are not emailed again by mistake.

10. Service providers and international transfers

We use carefully selected providers who process data only on our instructions: our hosting provider, which stores our client-management database, and our email delivery provider (currently Brevo, operated by Sendinblue SAS in the European Union), which sends our emails and tells us whether they were delivered or bounced. Pages on this site also load fonts and icons from Google Fonts and Cloudflare (cdnjs), which receive your IP address as part of delivering those files. Where providers are located outside Pakistan, we rely on their contractual data-protection commitments. We review providers’ data-processing terms before using them.

11. Cookies and local storage

This website does not use advertising or analytics cookies. Your display preferences (light/dark theme and accessibility settings) are saved in your own browser’s local storage so the site remembers them; they are never sent to us. To avoid showing you the same popup again, your browser also stores when you first visited and which popups you have already seen; this is kept only in your browser, contains no personal details and is never sent to us. You can clear it at any time in your browser settings. If we introduce analytics or other non-essential technologies in future, we will ask for your consent first.

12. How long we keep website data

• Enquiries and client-management records: while needed to respond to you and for the duration of any engagement; client records are then kept for the period required by law (see section 6). Enquiries from people who do not become clients are deleted after 24 months without activity.
• Anonymous chat questions and chats that did not lead to an enquiry: 90 days. Chats linked to an enquiry are kept with that enquiry.
• Popup form submissions: 24 months.
• Copies of emails we sent you: 180 days (delivery status records for up to 2 years).
• Records of consent and unsubscribes: kept as evidence while we hold your record; after deletion, only an irreversible coded form of your email address is kept so that we do not contact you again.

13. Your rights and how to make a request

You can ask us to give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it for particular purposes (including all optional emails). Where data-protection laws such as the EU or UK GDPR apply to you, you also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority. We aim to respond within 30 days. Some records may need to be kept where the law requires it, and we will explain if so.

To protect your information, we will email a confirmation link to the address you give and act only after you click it.

You can also write to our Data Protection Counsel using the details in section 7.