Privacy policy

Five things travel with the form: your name, your email address, a phone number if you chose to give one, whichever kind of help you picked from the dropdown, and whatever you typed into the message box. Only the name and email are required.

That message goes straight to Chuck's inbox as an email. It isn't written to a database, because this site doesn't have one. There's no CRM, no mailing list, and no copy sitting on a server somewhere waiting to be breached. The email itself is delivered by Resend, a sending service that passes the message along and does nothing else with it.

Chuck keeps enquiries in his email the way anyone keeps correspondence. If you'd rather he didn't, say so and he'll delete it.

Please don't send Social Security numbers, W-2s, or any tax document through the form. Ordinary email is the wrong place for that, and it always has been. When it's time to exchange real documents, Chuck sends a secure portal link.

This site uses Google Analytics, which sets a cookie in your browser and reports back which pages got looked at, roughly which town the visit came from, whether you arrived from a search or a link, and what kind of device you're on. It also records when somebody taps the phone number or sends the form, because that's the only way to know whether the site is doing its job.

None of that is tied to your name. Analytics sees a browser, not a person, and it stays that way unless you separately write in and tell us who you are.

If you'd rather not be counted, your browser's privacy settings will block it, and Google publishes an opt-out add-on that switches it off everywhere at once. Nothing on this site stops working if you do.

The map on the homepage is embedded from Google Maps, so loading that page tells Google you loaded it. The fonts are served from this site rather than a font network, which means one fewer company watching you read.

This site is hosted by Vercel, and like every web host on earth their servers log the usual technical details of a request: an IP address, a browser type, which page was asked for. The form also holds an IP address in memory for a few minutes to stop the same connection firing off dozens of submissions. That check is temporary and isn't stored or looked at afterwards.

Everything above is about a website. Once you become a client, what you hand over is tax return information, and that's governed by federal law written specifically for people in Chuck's job.

Section 7216 of the Internal Revenue Code makes it a criminal offence for a tax return preparer to disclose or use tax return information without your written consent, with a short list of narrow exceptions such as an actual court order. Not a checkbox, not fine print: written consent, for a stated purpose. On top of that, tax preparers count as financial institutions under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which brings them under the FTC Safeguards Rule and its requirements for protecting client information.

Put plainly, your return doesn't get shared with anyone, ever, unless you've signed something saying it can be. Not with marketers, not with lenders, not with a partner firm looking for referrals.

Your information is never sold, and it's never rented to a list broker. There's no advertising on this site, so nothing follows you around the internet afterwards. Writing in doesn't sign you up to a newsletter, because there isn't one. And no third party gets your details except the two named above that are needed to deliver an email and count a visit.

Call or write and you can ask what Chuck holds about you, ask him to correct it, or ask him to delete what he isn't legally required to keep. Tax records come with their own retention rules, so those he has to hang on to, but an enquiry you sent and later regretted is easy enough to remove.

You can also skip the form entirely. The phone number is at the top of every page for a reason, and plenty of people prefer it.

This site is meant for adults handling their own or their business's taxes, and it isn't directed at children under 13. If you think a child has sent something through the form, call and it'll be deleted.

If this policy changes, the date at the bottom changes with it. There's no mailing list to notify, so checking this page is the way to know.

Questions about any of it go to the same place as everything else:

Charles Trautman, EA
Tax Shop
9233 Park Meadows Drive, Suite 202
Lone Tree, CO 80124
303-734-1040
1040@taxshop.tax

Last updated 27 July 2026.