PrivacyProtocol.

2.1 Information you provide

When you contact us, request a consultation, or engage us for services, you may provide:

• Contact information such as name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
• Identifiers used by tax authorities where we prepare or review filings, including Social Security Number, Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, Employer Identification Number, and date of birth.
• Information about your business, entities, and ownership structure relevant to the services we provide.
• Financial records, statements, and supporting documents.
• Payment information when you purchase a subscription or pay a fee. Card and bank details are entered on our payment processor’s own hosted checkout page and are handled by that processor; we receive confirmation of the payment and limited details such as your name, email address, billing address, telephone number, the amount, and the last four digits of the payment method. We do not receive or store your full card number.
• Financial account information needed for ACH payment of fees, including bank routing and account numbers.
• Documents and files you upload through a secure client link we send you, and messages you send through that link.
• Where payroll is within scope, information about your employees that you provide to us so that payroll can be processed, which may include names, addresses, identifiers, compensation, and time records. You are responsible for having the authority to give us that information.
• Information about real estate, investments, foreign accounts, cryptocurrency activity, and other reportable items where they fall within our engagement.
• Communications you send to us by email, web form, telephone, or in person.

2.2 Information collected automatically

When you visit the website, our hosting provider automatically processes technical information such as IP address, user agent and device characteristics, referring URL, and the pages requested, in order to serve and secure the site. We do not operate an advertising network, an advertising pixel, or a cross-site tracking technology on this website. Our Cookie Policy describes what is stored on your device and by whom.

2.3 Information from third parties

We may receive information about you from third parties, including:

• Referrals from existing clients, attorneys, or financial advisors.
• Prior tax preparers or accountants, where you authorize us to obtain your records.
• The Internal Revenue Service and state tax authorities, where you authorize us by Form 8821, Form 2848, or equivalent state forms to obtain your transcripts or correspond on your behalf.

We use information to:

• Provide the services we offer, including monthly CFO advisory, bookkeeping and accounting, financial statements and loan-ready reporting, payroll management and Department of Labor support, tax notice response and sales tax audit representation, estimated tax planning, business formation and entity structuring guidance, and government contracting and vendor compliance support.
• Process subscription payments, issue confirmations and receipts, and manage renewals, cancellations, and payment disputes.
• Prepare and electronically file federal, state, and local filings where that is within scope.
• Communicate with you about your engagement and our services.
• Verify identity, prevent fraud, and meet our anti-money-laundering and know-your-client obligations where applicable.
• Bill for services and collect fees.
• Maintain workpapers and records as required by professional standards and law.
• Comply with legal and regulatory obligations.
• Operate, secure, and improve our website and internal systems.

4.1 Service providers and software vendors

We use service providers and software vendors to operate our website, our secure client systems, and our practice. Where a service provider or subprocessor handles client information, we require written confidentiality and use-limitation terms and select providers we have determined are capable of maintaining appropriate safeguards. The categories we use, and the providers integrated into our systems, are:

• Website hosting and delivery. Serves the website and processes the technical information described in Section 2.2.
• Payment processing: Stripe, Inc. Card and bank details for a subscription or fee payment are entered on Stripe’s own hosted checkout and are processed by Stripe under Stripe’s privacy policy. Stripe collects your name, email address, billing address, telephone number, and payment details in order to take and manage the payment, and returns transaction information to us.
• Artificial-intelligence processing: Anthropic, PBC and Google LLC. Where our systems use automated assistance to read, extract, categorize, or summarize the contents of documents, statements, and messages, the relevant content is transmitted to one of these providers for processing and the result is returned to us. This can include the contents of financial documents you send us. Our website assistant transmits the messages you type into it to one of these providers to generate a reply. See Section 4.7.
• Account authentication: Clerk, Inc. Authenticates staff and authorized users of our practice systems and holds the associated account identifiers and session information.
• Database hosting. A managed cloud database provider stores client, engagement, document-request, and payment-confirmation records.
• Document storage: Cloudflare, Inc. (R2). Stores files uploaded through a secure client link and files we prepare for you.
• Email delivery: Resend, Inc. Sends transactional email such as secure client links and payment confirmations.
• Text messaging: Twilio Inc. Where enabled, sends the transactional text messages described in our Terms of Engagement.
• Appointment scheduling: Cal.com, Inc. Our booking page is operated by Cal.com. Information you enter to book a consultation, such as your name, email address, and any note you add, is collected by Cal.com under its own privacy policy and shared with us.
• Accounting, tax-preparation, and information-technology software used in the ordinary course of our practice.

Naming a provider above does not mean it processes every category of information. Each is used for the purpose described next to it.

4.2 Tax and regulatory authorities

With your authorization on the relevant form, we transmit information to the Internal Revenue Service, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, the New York City Department of Finance, and other applicable state and local authorities for the purpose of completing filings or responding to authority notices.

4.3 With your consent

We disclose information to other parties at your direction, for example to your bank, attorney, financial advisor, or lender. Any non-return-preparation use or disclosure of tax return information requires separate written consent that meets the requirements of Internal Revenue Code Section 7216 and Treasury Regulation Section 301.7216 where applicable.

4.4 Compelled disclosure

We may disclose information when required by subpoena, court order, or other lawful process, or when we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of QNOW, our clients, or others. Where permitted by law, we will provide notice to affected clients before producing records.

4.5 Business transfers

If QNOW is involved in a merger, acquisition, succession planning event, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, client information may be transferred subject to confidentiality obligations and applicable professional rules.

4.6 No sale or sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising

We do not sell personal information for monetary consideration and we do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended.

4.7 Automated processing and artificial intelligence

We use artificial-intelligence services from the providers named in Section 4.1 to assist with reading and organizing information, for example extracting transactions from a bank statement, suggesting a category for a transaction, classifying an uploaded tax document, and generating replies in the assistant on our website. Where that happens, the relevant content is transmitted to the provider, processed, and returned to us.

Two points about this matter to you:

• Output is reviewed, not relied on blindly. Automated output is a working aid. It is reviewed by our team before it is used in your books, statements, or filings. We do not make decisions about you that produce legal or similarly significant effects solely by automated means.
• Tax return information. Where Internal Revenue Code Section 7216 applies to information you have given us, we treat any use or disclosure outside preparing your return as requiring your separate written consent, as described in Section 5.

Do not enter Social Security Numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, banking information, or other sensitive personal information into the assistant on our website. It is a general information tool, not a secure submission channel.

Federal law restricts what tax return preparers may do with tax return information. To the extent QNOW prepares or assists in preparing tax returns, Internal Revenue Code Section 7216 and Treasury Regulation Section 301.7216 govern that information. Any use or disclosure outside preparing the return requires your separate written consent in the form prescribed by the Internal Revenue Service. We will provide that consent form for your review before any such use or disclosure.

Tax preparers and accountants are treated as “financial institutions” under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Federal Trade Commission Safeguards Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 314). Consistent with those rules, we maintain a Written Information Security Program (WISP) designed in accordance with the Safeguards Rule and intended to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer information. Specific implementation details are maintained in our internal program documentation.

7.1 California (CCPA / CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act. Subject to verification and exceptions in the statute, you may have the right to know, access, correct, delete, receive a portable copy, opt out of sale or sharing, limit the use of sensitive personal information, and be free from retaliation. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CPRA. Information regulated under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act may be exempt from the CCPA; we rely on that exemption where it applies.

7.2 New York (SHIELD Act)

New York’s Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (SHIELD Act) requires reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the private information of New York residents and notification of affected residents in the event of a breach of security. Our WISP and incident response procedures are designed to meet these requirements.

7.3 Other state consumer privacy laws

Residents of states with comprehensive consumer privacy laws may have rights to access, correct, delete, obtain a copy of, and opt out of certain processing of personal data. We do not engage in profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. To exercise these rights, contact us using the details below. We will generally respond within forty-five (45) days, with a single extension where reasonably necessary and permitted by law.

7.4 European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland (GDPR)

If you visit the website from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, our services are operated from the United States. Personal data submitted to us will be transferred to and processed in the United States. Subject to applicable law, you may request access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, and portability, and you may object to processing based on legitimate interests.

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies for essential site operation, such as remembering the language you selected and keeping a signed-in session active in our practice systems. We do not use these technologies to build advertising profiles and we do not run advertising or cross-site tracking technology on this website. See our Cookie Policy for detail. We honor opt-out preference signals (such as Global Privacy Control) where required by applicable law.

The website is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

We retain client records consistent with federal recordkeeping rules applicable to tax return preparers, the New York Tax Law, and applicable professional obligations. When records are no longer required to be retained, we delete or destroy them in a manner appropriate to their sensitivity.

We maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. No system is perfectly secure. Do not send sensitive information through unencrypted email; use the telephone number below or request a secure submission method.

If we determine that an unauthorized acquisition of unencrypted or unsecured personal information has occurred, we will notify affected individuals and applicable authorities consistent with the New York SHIELD Act, the FTC Safeguards Rule, IRS data-theft reporting expectations, and other applicable state breach notification laws.

We are based in New York and our services are operated from the United States. If you submit information to us from outside the United States, or complete a payment from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be received and processed in the United States, and that our service providers, including those named in Section 4.1, may process it in the United States or in other countries in which they operate.

You may decline to provide information, although that may prevent us from completing your engagement. You may unsubscribe from marketing emails by following the instructions in those emails; transactional or engagement-related communications continue while we are providing services. You may stop transactional text messages by replying STOP. If you hold a subscription, you may cancel it as described in our Refund & Cancellation Policy; cancelling ends future billing but does not by itself delete records we are required to retain under Section 10. You have the rights described in Section 7 depending on your jurisdiction.

To submit a privacy request, contact us by email at info@qnowconsulting.com or by phone at (646) 904-5895, with “Privacy Request” in the subject line. We will verify your identity before fulfilling a request, using information already in our records or by reasonable additional verification. You may use an authorized agent where permitted; we will require written proof of authorization. We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law.

We may update this Privacy Protocol from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent revision. Material changes will be communicated by reasonable means before they take effect.

QNOW Consulting Inc.
Attention: Privacy Inquiries
New York, NY
Phone: (646) 904-5895
Email: info@qnowconsulting.com