SMT Accounting Pty Ltd (“SMT Accounting”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a registered tax agency (Registered Tax Agent No. 26266813, ABN 20 678 656 801). We are committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information and comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy (Tax File Number) Rule 2015.
This policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and protect it, and your rights in relation to it.
Contents
1. Information we collect
To provide accounting and tax agent services we may collect and hold personal information including:
- Your name, date of birth, and contact details (address, phone, email);
- Your Tax File Number (TFN), Australian Business Number (ABN) and other government identifiers;
- Financial information — income, expenses, deductions, assets, liabilities and bank account details;
- Identification documents (such as a driver’s licence or passport) required to verify your identity for the ATO;
- Employment, business, superannuation and investment records; and
- Any other information you provide to us in connection with our services.
2. How we collect it
We collect personal information directly from you — through our website contact and booking forms, our secure online onboarding, email, phone, WhatsApp, engagement letters and in meetings. Where you authorise us to, we may also collect information from third parties such as the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), your employer, financial institutions, or your previous accountant.
3. How we use it
We use your personal information to:
- Provide the accounting, taxation, bookkeeping and advisory services you engage us for;
- Prepare and lodge income tax returns, activity statements and other documents with the ATO and ASIC;
- Communicate with you and respond to your enquiries;
- Meet our professional, legal and regulatory obligations, including under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009; and
- Administer our business and maintain our records.
4. Tax File Numbers
5. Disclosure
We may disclose your personal information to:
- The ATO, ASIC and other government agencies as required to provide our services or comply with the law;
- Trusted third parties who help us deliver our services — for example cloud accounting providers (such as Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks), auditors, and IT service providers — who are bound by confidentiality;
- Other parties where you have given us your consent, or where we are required or authorised by law.
We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information.
6. Overseas disclosure and storage
Some of the services we use hold data on servers outside Australia. As far as practicable, the countries involved are:
- United States — our website, contact and booking forms and secure online onboarding are hosted by DreamHost. Information you submit through the website (including, for onboarding, your tax file number, identification and bank details) is stored on that server in a private area that is not web-accessible, and is removed from it after we have transferred it to our practice records; onboarding submissions older than 90 days are purged from the server automatically.
- New Zealand, the United States and other countries where the provider operates — cloud accounting software (Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks) and the email and document services we use (Microsoft and Google).
- Where Meta operates — if you choose to contact us by WhatsApp, your messages pass through Meta's systems under WhatsApp's own privacy policy. Please do not send tax file numbers, identification or bank details by WhatsApp.
Where this occurs we take reasonable steps to ensure your information is handled in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles, including by using providers with strong security practices and contractual confidentiality obligations.
7. Data security
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure — including secure systems, access controls and confidentiality obligations on our team. When information is no longer required and we are not obliged to retain it, we take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it.
How long we keep it. Tax records and working papers are kept for at least five years after the relevant lodgment, as the tax laws require, and longer where a matter (such as a capital gains calculation) remains relevant. We do not keep copies of identity documents. Where you upload a copy through our secure onboarding form, it is used only to verify your identity, and it is deleted once the verification is recorded — and in any case within 30 days of upload. We keep a record of the verification itself (date, method and the type of document checked) for at least five years, as the Tax Practitioners Board requires; see how we verify identity. Website enquiry and booking details are deleted once the enquiry is closed.
8. Access & correction
You may request access to the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, out of date or incomplete. Contact us using the details below and we will respond within a reasonable time. In limited circumstances permitted by law we may decline a request, in which case we will explain why.
9. Our website
When you submit our website contact form or a booking request, we collect the details you provide (such as your name, phone, email, preferred contact time and message) in order to respond to you. If you use our free ABN lookup tool, the ABN or business name you enter is sent to the Australian Business Register to retrieve publicly available register details; we do not use these searches to identify you. Our website is served over a secure (HTTPS) connection, its fonts and scripts are served from our own domain, and it does not load third-party trackers, advertising cookies or analytics. Our web server keeps standard access logs (IP address, pages requested, browser type) for security purposes for a limited time. If any of this changes, we will update this policy.
Anonymity and direct marketing. You can browse our website and ask general questions without identifying yourself. We do not use your personal information for direct marketing and we do not operate a marketing mailing list; the emails we send are confirmations and reminders about your own matters.
10. Complaints
If you have a concern about how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first (details below) and we will do our best to resolve it. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.
For concerns specifically about our conduct as a registered tax agent, you may also contact the Tax Practitioners Board at tpb.gov.au/complaints.
11. Contact us
SMT Accounting Pty Ltd
53 Mootwingee Cres, Shepparton North VIC 3631
Office 03 7302 0516 · Mobile 0466 666 598
Email info@smtaccounting.com.au
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The current version will always be available on this page.