Privacy Policy

ElasticAccountant ("ElasticAccountant," "we," "us," or "our") operates elasticaccountant.com (the "Site"), a platform intended to connect business owners with independent, US-licensed accountants (CPAs and Enrolled Agents) who provide written answers to tax questions. ElasticAccountant is not an accounting firm and does not itself provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. The answering service is not yet available; today the Site collects questions to measure demand and decide where to launch.

When you submit the question form, we collect:

• Your question. The free-text description of your tax situation that you type into the question box.
• A few categorical answers. Your entity type, state, whether you operate in more than one state, an annual-revenue band, your current level of accounting support, and whether you have a deadline. These are fixed choices, not free text.

The form does not ask for your name, email address, phone number, or any other contact or identity details, and we ask you not to include Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, or other sensitive identifiers in the question box. We do not knowingly collect that information, and because we do not collect contact details we generally cannot identify who submitted a given question.

When you use the Site, we and our analytics providers automatically collect certain technical and usage information, including your device and browser type, approximate location derived from your IP address, pages viewed, links and buttons clicked, and how you move through and interact with the Site.

Some of our providers record sessions (for example, mouse movement, scrolling, clicks, and text entered into forms) to help us understand how the Site is used. This means the content you type, including your question, may also be captured by these tools.

We use the following third-party services, each of which processes data under its own privacy policy:

• Google Analytics 4 - usage and traffic measurement. We send it the categorical answers above and event counts; we do not use it as the store for your question text.
• Contentsquare - session recording and experience/behavior analytics.
• PostHog - product analytics and event tracking.

These providers may set cookies or use similar technologies. We do not sell your personal information.

The question you submit and the categorical answers are sent to our own back-end service and stored in our database. We use this information to:

• measure interest in the service and understand what business owners actually ask;
• decide whether, where, and how to launch, and in which states to open first;
• operate, maintain, secure, and improve the Site;
• if and when the service launches in your state, help prepare an answer to a question like yours.

Because we do not collect contact details, we cannot email or call you, and we cannot follow up on your specific question.

We share information only in these situations:

• Service providers who process data on our behalf, such as our hosting, database, and the analytics providers listed above.
• Legal and safety - when required by law, to respond to legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of any person.
• Business transfers - in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, subject to this policy.

We and our providers use cookies and similar technologies to run the Site, remember your preferences (such as language), and measure usage. Analytics run by default, and you can decline non-essential cookies at any time:

• Use the "Reject" option on the cookie banner shown on the Site.
• Block or delete cookies in your browser settings.
• We honor recognized opt-out preference signals, including Global Privacy Control (GPC), where required by law.

Blocking some cookies may affect how the Site works.

We keep the questions and categorical answers you submit for as long as needed to measure demand and build the service, and then delete or anonymize them unless a longer period is required by law. Analytics data is retained for the limited period set by each provider (for example, Google Analytics is configured to retain event data for 14 months).

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures - such as encryption in transit (HTTPS), access controls, and vetted service providers - to protect the information we hold. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to withdraw consent. Residents of the EEA/UK (GDPR) and California (CCPA/CPRA) have specific rights, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them.

Because we do not collect contact details, submissions are not linked to an identified person, which can make a request harder to match to a specific record. To ask us to delete a question you submitted, email privacy@elasticaccountant.com and include enough detail for us to locate it - for example, the approximate date and time you submitted it, your state and entity type, and a short excerpt of the wording. We will delete matching records and confirm by reply.

If you are in the EEA or UK, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection supervisory authority.

We are based in the United States and process information there. If you access the Site from outside the US, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the US, where data-protection laws may differ from those in your country.

The Site is intended for business owners and is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, please contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above, and significant changes may be highlighted on the Site.

Questions about this policy or your information? Email privacy@elasticaccountant.com.