Privacy notice

Who we are

Octotax is a trading name of Jacob Norton, a sole trader in the UK. Jacob Norton is the controller of the personal data described here. Octotax is new and is being tested with a small number of early users. You can contact us about anything in this notice at [email protected].

If your accountant uses Octotax for Accountants, their client area also runs on Octotax. Your accountant is in charge of the data in their client area; our privacy notice for firms and their clients explains that part.

Where your data is kept

Octotax runs on equipment we operate in the United Kingdom. Each night the database is backed up, encrypted, and a copy is kept in our Google Drive for 30 days. It's encrypted before it leaves our equipment, so Google can't read it.

What we collect

• Your email address, to sign you in with one-time codes and send reminders.
• Your name, if you choose to give it.
• Answers about your tax situation: for example whether you're self-employed, a landlord, VAT registered or an employer, a turnover band, your VAT quarters, and any property sale dates you add.
• Companies you add: the company number and the public information Companies House holds about it (name, status, year end, filing dates), and alerts when something changes on the register.
• Your tax pot: the amount you've set aside for tax, if you choose to record it.
• What you tick off and a record of which reminders we've sent, so we don't send them twice.
• If you link with your accountant: which firm you're linked to, what you've chosen to share, and when the link started or ended.
• Technical data: a sign-in cookie, and IP addresses in security and rate-limit logs.

We don't ask for bank logins, National Insurance numbers or tax reference numbers.

Why we use it

• To provide the service you signed up for: working out your deadlines, showing your dashboard and sending reminders (lawful basis: contract).
• To keep the service secure and prevent abuse (lawful basis: legitimate interests).
• To pass your request to an accountant you choose to contact (lawful basis: consent, given each time you ask).
• To link your app with your accountant and show them what you choose to share (lawful basis: consent, which you can withdraw at any time by changing what you share or unlinking).
• To tell you when more accountants join, only if you switch that on (lawful basis: consent, which you can withdraw in Settings).

Linking with your accountant

If your accountant uses Octotax for Accountants, you can link your app to them. You sign in to the app and to their client area with the same email address. Linking is always your choice.

• What you get: your accountant's work for you shows in your app, dates they handle are marked as theirs, and their filings tick off your deadlines. To make the dates line up, we add the business your accountant has on file (its Companies House details and which of their services you use) to your app. It's then part of your app, and you can edit or remove it.
• What your accountant sees: only what you choose: your app deadlines, Companies House alerts and, only if you switch it on, your tax pot. They see it while you're linked. You can change your choices at any time.
• Asking to link: if you ask a firm to link with you, we send them your name, email address and any note you add.
• Unlinking: you or your accountant can unlink at any time. Your accountant stops seeing anything from your app straight away, and your work for them stops showing in it. You keep your app and its data. Your accountant keeps their own records about you, under their own privacy notice.

Cookies

We use one strictly necessary cookie to keep you signed in. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies. If that changes, we'll ask first.

Who we share it with

• Cloudflare, which provides our network, security and email forwarding.
• Resend, our email provider, which delivers sign-in codes and reminders (sent from the EU).
• Google, which stores our encrypted backups (it can't read them).
• Companies House: when you search for or add a company, we send what you type to Companies House to look up its public record.
• Your accountant, only if you link with them or ask them to contact you, as described in this notice.

Some of these providers handle data outside the UK, such as Cloudflare's global network. Those transfers are covered by UK adequacy regulations (including the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) or by the Information Commissioner's standard data transfer clauses.

We never sell your data, share it with advertisers or use it to train artificial intelligence models. If you ask an accountant listed in Octotax for help, we send that firm your name, email, any phone number and message you add and, if you tick the box, a summary of your deadlines and companies. That only happens when you ask, and only to the firm you choose. From then on the firm looks after that information under its own privacy policy.

If you ask our partner firm, Byte Accounting, to contact you, we send them the details you choose (your name, email, any phone number and message, and your deadlines only if you tick that box), and only with your consent. Byte then handles them under its own privacy notice. We keep a record that you asked; if you delete your account, we keep only the date.

How long we keep it

For as long as you have an account. Sign-in codes expire after 15 minutes and sign-in sessions after 30 days of inactivity. When you delete your account (Settings → Delete my account), everything in it is deleted immediately, any link with an accountant ends, and it drops out of our encrypted backups within 30 days. Your accountant keeps their own records about you. If you send us feedback, we keep that message in our inbox for as long as it's useful.

Your rights

You can access, correct or delete your data at any time. Most of it you can do yourself in the app; for anything else email [email protected]. You also have the right to object to how we use your data, to withdraw consent (for example by unlinking from your accountant), and to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).