Privacy

Bigelow Family Financial, LLC                                           Privacy Policy 2023

It is our policy to keep your personal and business matters confidential to the extent permitted by law. The Federal Trade Commission has issued regulations that require tax preparation firms to
provide an annual statement of firm privacy policies.

Bigelow Family Financial, LLC privacy policies and practices have been outlined below, pursuant to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Financial
Privacy and Safeguards Rules.

In order to provide the services that you have engaged us to perform, we collect non-public information about you from the following possible sources:

  • Information we receive from you on applications, financial statements, tax organizers, tax returns, worksheets, and any other documents that you have provided us.
  • Information we receive on documents from your employers, clients, financial and investment firms, creditors, lenders, mortgage companies, taxing authorities, charities, etc.
  • Information we receive verbally from your employers, clients, financial and investment firms, creditors, lenders, mortgage companies, taxing authorities, charities and others in response to our inquiries made on your behalf for additional information and/or clarification.
  • Information we receive from other financial or legal professionals and any other reliable
    third parties on your behalf.
  • Information about your transactions with us or others.

We do not disclose any non-public, personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone, except as requested by you, or as required by law. We cannot provide any tax return copies or information to any third parties without a signed consent form from you; email and verbal requests will not be accepted.

There are specific cases of limited disclosure that may be required in order to perform the work you have engaged us to complete. Those are as follows:

  • Business Services: We may utilize third party services or software which in some cases would require the disclosure of information to reliable third parties who are required to maintain your privacy and utilize the information only in the furtherance of the services being rendered.
  • Income Tax Preparation: In order to provide electronic filing services, we transmit income tax returns to our software vendor who forwards returns directly to the Internal Revenue Service over secure computer connections. The vendor receives and returns IRS acknowledgements and/or rejections of e-filed returns including error codes. Our vendor(s) are authorized by IRS to perform this service and are required by the IRS and the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act to protect taxpayer information and to not use the data, information, tax returns in any other way.

Access to your personal information is restricted to those members of this company who need to know that information in order to provide services to you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to guard your personal information. This policy covers any information gathered through any means or method. We maintain appropriate security measures for computer and information systems, including the use of passwords, firewalls and other internet security systems.

Personally identifiable information about you will be maintained while you are a client, and for at least the period thereafter that records are required to be maintained. After that time, any paper files will be destroyed utilizing a micro-cut shredder with a P5 security level and electronic files will be deleted.

We welcome any questions you have about our privacy policy.
Sincerely,

Ellen M. Bigelow, ChFC®, RICP®, CASL®, EA

Office Phone: 360-890-4507