IF R&D Tax Credits Limited is a firm of Chartered Tax Advisers and Chartered Accountants who specialise in advising companies in relation to research and development (R&D) tax credits and the patent box. Our company number is NI628189 and our address is Unit 3, 405 Holywood Road, Belfast, BT4 2GU.
IF R&D Tax Credits Limited is a data controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR) and is registered with the ICO accordingly. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We will gladly comply with data protection laws and principles, which means that your data will be:
- used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
- collected for, and relevant to, the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes (in your case the marketing and provision of R&D tax credit advisory services)
- accurate and kept up to date
- kept over time only if necessary for the purposes we have told you about
- kept securely
The kind of information we hold about you
We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you in connection with the marketing and provision of R&D tax credit advisory services:
- any personal information you have provided to us via email or a phone call when you speak to us including your name, title, telephone number and email address
- any information you have consented to a third party passing to us in the course of referring you to us
- any information included on your business card which you may have passed to us
- if your company has engaged our services, information about your occupation that is relevant to a tax credit claim
How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about you from the following sources:
- via our website, email, phone call or other incoming communication – this is when you make contact with us expressing an interest in receiving our services or information about them
- via an introducer or referrer – please note that our introducer / referrer agreements require the introducer / referrer to have the express consent of the person being referred to pass their contact details to us in connection with receipt of R&D services
- in person where you hand us a business card or give us your contact details
- publicly available sources such as Companies House
- social media such as LinkedIn
- from your company where it is directly relevant to an R&D claim
How we will use information about you
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
- provide you with information about our services
- where applicable, to pay any referrer or introducer fee due to you
- where applicable, to enter into a contract with you and / or to deliver R&D tax credit services to you
- to keep records related to the provision of our services
- to comply with legal or regulatory requirements including carrying out Anti-Money Laundering checks
If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide legally required information when requested, such as to enable us to undertake Anti-Money Laundering Checks, we will not be able to provide services to you.
Automated decision-making
We do not use automated decision making in the provision of our services.
Data sharing
We will only share your personal information with providers of our IT systems, including cloud service providers for file and data storage.
All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, altered, disclosed or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a valid business need-to-know reason. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the Data Protection Manager.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where there is a chance of it impacting you.
Data retention
How long will you use my information for?
Except where we enter into a contract to provide services to you, or you authorise us to retain it for longer, we will retain your personal information for 3 years.
Where we enter into a contract to provide you with services or payments for services you provide to us, we will retain any records for the minimum legal period. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy. Details of these specific time periods are available from our data protection manager on request.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
Your rights in connection with personal information. Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you.
- Request erasure of your personal information. This can ask us to delete personal information where we have no good reason to continue to process it.
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there are circumstances which make you want to object to processing on these grounds. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to exercise any of these rights, please contact our data protection manager.
Data protection manager
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact us.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority.