Privacy Policy

What this policy covers

Copper & Vine Accounting, PLLC is a tax and accounting practice based in Missoula, Montana. This policy explains what we collect through this website and our client portal, why we collect it, and what happens to it afterwards.

Tax return information is governed by stricter federal rules than ordinary personal data. Those are covered separately below, because the difference matters.

What this website collects

This site runs no analytics, no advertising pixels and no third-party trackers. Fonts and images are served from our own domain, so loading a page does not report your visit to anyone else.

The only information we receive is what you type into a form and send us:

• Your name and email address, and a phone number if you choose to give one
• Whatever you write in the message field
• On a quote request: your state, your industry, which services you are asking about, and for a business — company name, employee count, entity structure and website

We also record the IP address a submission came from and the time it arrived. That is how automated spam is identified, and it is the only thing we collect that you did not type.

We set no cookies. One item is stored in your browser — a flag remembering that you have seen the opening animation, so it does not replay on every page. It is cleared when you close the tab.

Tax return information

If you become a client, the documents and figures you send us are tax return information, governed by section 7216 of the Internal Revenue Code. That is a higher bar than most privacy law: we may not disclose or use it for any purpose beyond preparing your return without your written consent, and a violation carries criminal penalties, not merely civil ones.

We do not ask for that consent in order to market to you. We do not share client tax data with third parties for their own purposes, and we do not use it to build a mailing list.

Where the law compels disclosure — a court order, a valid IRS summons — we will tell you unless we are forbidden to.

What we never do

• We do not sell personal information, to anyone, for any purpose
• We do not share your information with advertisers, data brokers or lead resellers
• We do not use your tax return information to market anything to you
• We do not send client documents as email attachments
• We do not embed third-party widgets that report your visit elsewhere

If that list ever changes, it changes here first, with the date updated.

How long we keep things

An enquiry that does not become an engagement is kept for up to twelve months while we follow up, and then deleted. It does not become a marketing list.

Client records are kept for the duration of the engagement and afterwards for as long as tax and professional rules require — generally seven years for records supporting a filed return. That retention is not discretionary: it is what allows a return to be defended years after it was filed.

Your choices, and reaching us

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete anything we are not required to keep. Email us and a person will answer, usually within one business day.

Where a record is one we are required to retain, a deletion request cannot override that — but we will tell you plainly which category something falls into rather than refusing without explanation.

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it.