You have questions about the Section 7216 form and we have answers! This is an unfamiliar subject, we know, so we've compiled the most common questions into the FAQ below.
You can find the technical explanation in this IRS publication. In our words, the Sec. 7216 Consent to Disclosure is a safeguard enacted and regulated by the IRS to ensure that tax preparers are safe and transparent in their tax preparation processes to mitigate security risks related to the sharing of sensitive personal data. We believe you have the right to be fully informed about who has access to your tax data and where it’s being processed.
Much of inDinero’s accounting and tax teams are located in our Philippines office, and we do not have the ability to provide any tax services to your account from the US only. We cannot work with companies who do not sign the 7216 on any tax engagements because our Philippines office has access to company and personal information stored in the inDinero account.
We do our very best to make sure that you are kept in the loop as your expiration date expires. Three weeks prior to the expiry date, an automatic urgently marked to-do is placed in your queue for you to review, sign, and mark as complete.
If you aren't able to get to this to-do by your expiry date restriction to the Tax Questionnaire is in place and you'll be redirected to sign your 7216.
Tax return preparers must obtain consent when sharing tax return data with any third party. One particular provision of Sec. 7216 is that tax preparers must gain explicit consent if their tax return data will be shared with a “foreign-based” preparer (a preparer not in the US). Since inDinero has office locations in the Philippines, we must gain your consent to allow our Philippines based preparers to prepare your return. The calendar date selected gives consent to your inDinero team for one year until renewal is requested.
No, our Philippines office is an offshore team, not an outsourced function of inDinero: they are legitimate employees of inDinero and have direct managers here in the US.
Given that we are a tech company and a tax practice, we're focused on data security for all of our clients. Our platform, data storage, and tax software have security measures to prevent a security breach.
Our business model is intentionally designed to ensure quality accounting and tax services at an economical price - this design works because we have a paired Philippines and US team. All of our internal structures are based on that model and support the sharing of client data with the tools we have.
We cannot mask the SSN or restrict your financial data as our internal structure does not support this. Even if we prepped the income tax return in the United States, the data is stored in our cloud, which every team member has access to (Sec. 7216 is designed to prevent this without client consent).