The website at lextax.ro (our “Websites”) are owned and operated by LexTax Management & Advisory LTD, for the benefit of all Lextax Member Firms and their connected businesses (the “LexTax”). 

 

Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle and treat your data when you (i) register or visit our site, www.dlapiper.com or associated sites or pages (the “Site”) or (ii) engage with us to use the products or services that LexTax provides (our “Services”). It also includes information about individuals whose personal information we may process as a result of providing the Services to third parties and individuals who apply to work at LexTax.

In this Privacy Notice, references to “we”, “us” or “our” means LexTax and/or the LexTax Offices. References to “you” and “your” are to users of our Websites.

In this Privacy Notice “Personal Information” is information relating to you, which can be used to personally identify you (either directly or indirectly).

APPLICATION OF THE PRIVACY POLICY

This Privacy Notice:

• describes how we collect, use and otherwise handle Personal Information that you provide or make available to us, or that we collect from you, when you use our Websites,
• explains the circumstances in which we may transfer this to others; and
• explains about the rights that you have in relation to this Personal Information.  

Our Privacy Notice must be read together with any other legal notices or terms and conditions provided or made available to you on other pages of our Websites or when you download one of our apps.

As LexTax is a local practice, operating from Romania, Romanian-specific requirements may apply to your use of our Websites. ou can view country-specific privacy information as part of this Privacy Notice here.

HOW, WHEN AND WHY DO WE COLLECT AND USE PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Personal Information that we collect

The types of information that we may collect from you, depending on how you use our Websites is:

1. your name;
   b.    your email address;
   c.    your address (business and personal);
   d.    your landline and mobile telephone numbers (business and/or personal);
   e.    any information that you choose to provide to us when filling out a contact form on our Websites;
   f.     your opinions, when you choose to complete one of our surveys;
   g.    your geographic location (country/territory where you are living and/or working);
   h.      your job title, role and the name of your employer;
   i.      the industry sector in which you work;
   j.    the country or countries, industry sector(s) and area(s) of law in respect of which you wish to receive communications and
   k.      the content of your C.V. and covering letter (where you apply for a vacancy with us on our Websites).

How we use your Personal Information

Contact Forms – we may collect your Personal Information, which you choose to provide when you fill in forms on our Websites, including the information set out in a.-e. above. We may use this Personal Information to respond to your queries, and/or provide the services and/or information that you have requested.

Blog/Newsletter Subscription– if you choose to subscribe to our portal(s)/ blog/newsletters (whichever available), we use Personal Information that you provide during the subscription process to set-up and maintain your account and to send you relevant content by email. This will consist of information on legal, tax and business issues that are relevant to your preferences. We will also tell you about our events and seminars, when applicable. You have the option to receive invitations to our events. If you want to receive such invitations you can let us know by ticking the relevant box on the subscription form (when available).

Your agreement to the use of your Personal Information for these purposes is optional. If you decide not to subscribe to LexTax, we will not send you communications, but your use of our Websites will remain otherwise unaffected. 

You are entitled to opt-out from receipt of newsletter communications at any time. You can do so by visiting the our website pages and deselecting all email options. You can also use the “unsubscribe” option included in all LexTax e-mails. Alternatively, you can email the our support team who will process “unsubscribe” requests for you. When you unsubscribe we will keep a record of this, and once your request has been processed, you will stop receiving our emails. You can still use our Websites once you have unsubscribed.

Recruitment – if you apply for a vacancy in our company you will be directed to our dedicated recruitment team. For vacancies handled by recruitment teams, we either ask you to contact us directly by email or we request that you upload a copy of your C.V. and covering letter so that we can consider your suitability for the role.

Surveys – we may ask you if you would like to provide us with feedback on our services and/or events by completing a survey. This is optional. We use feedback from surveys to evaluate our performance and to help improve our future services and/or events.

Events – if you wish to attend one of our events we will ask that you complete a registration form. The registration form will contain an explanation of how we handle your Personal Information in connection with the relevant event.

Our Business Purposes – we may also use your Personal Information for our business purposes as follows:

• to manage our business;
• to communicate with you;
• to enable corporate transactions to take place;
• for record keeping, statistical analysis, internal reporting and research purposes;
• to ensure network and information security;
• to notify you about changes to our services;
• to investigate any complaint you make;
• to provide evidence in any dispute or anticipated dispute between you and us;
• to analyse how our Websites are being used;
• to customise various aspects of our Websites to improve your experience;
• to host, maintain and otherwise support the operation of our Websites;
• for the detection and prevention of fraud and other criminal offences;
• for risk management purposes;
• for business and disaster recovery (e.g. to create back-ups);
• for document retention/storage purposes;
• for database management purposes;
• to protect the rights, property, and/or safety of LexTax, its personnel and others; and
• to ensure the quality of the services we provide to our users.

If you choose not to provide Personal Information requested by us, we may not be able to provide you with the information and/or services you have requested or otherwise fulfil the purpose(s) for which we have asked for the Personal Information. Aside from this, your visit to our Websites will remain unaffected.

Legal grounds for collection and use of Personal Information

We ask for your consent to process your Personal Information in relation to LexTax and in some cases for recruitment purposes (where this is made clear to you at the point where you provide your information). In other cases, we process your personal information where we need to do so:

• to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• for our legitimate interests in:
  • responding to your queries;
  • providing services and/or information to you;
  • organising events;
  • carrying out surveys in order to obtain feedback on our services and/or events;
  • recruiting personnel (except in cases where we ask for your consent as mentioned above); and
  • our internal business purposes, as set out in articles above.

You can object to processing based on our legitimate interests at any time by contacting us here. See also “Your Rights – The right to object” below.

We consider that the risk to your data protection rights in connection with Personal Information that we process on the basis of our legitimate interests is not excessive or overly intrusive. We have also put in place protections for your rights by ensuring proper retention periods and security controls.

If you would like to find out more about the legal grounds on which we process your Personal Information for a particular purpose you can contact us here. 

Cookies

Where you use our Websites, we will process your Personal Information collected by using cookies in accordance with our Cookie Policy.  Please click here to view our Cookie Policy. 

Information from other sources

Where permissible under applicable local laws, we may combine information that you have provided to us with other information that we already hold about you and which we have collected for a compatible purpose.

HOW AND WHEN DO WE SHARE INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES?

Some of the functionality on our Websites involves us cooperating with, and sharing your Personal Information with third parties. We have carefully selected these third parties and taken steps to ensure that when we share your Personal Information with them, it is adequately protected. Details about how we process Personal Information on our Websites in conjunction with third parties is set out below:

We share your Personal Information with:

• our accountants, auditors, lawyers or similar advisers when we ask them to provide us with professional advice;
• any other third party if we are under a duty to disclose or share your Personal Information in order to comply with any legal obligation;
• any other third party for the purposes of acting in accordance with the requirements of a court, tribunal, regulator or government agency, for example, complying with a search warrant or court order; or
• investors and other relevant third parties in the event of an actual potential sale or other corporate transaction related to LexTax.

Our Websites provide sharing buttons that you can click on in order to share content from our Websites on social media channels, e.g., Facebook. We do not use these buttons to share your Personal Information with social media providers. When you click on a sharing button the relevant social media provider will gather Personal Information directly from you. Please read the privacy notice of any social media provider with which you intend to share content before clicking on the corresponding sharing button.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

The do NOT transfer of your Personal Information to and between any third party, outside of the EEA, to locations that may not provide the same level of protection as those where you first provided the information.

HOW LONG DO WE STORE PERSONAL INFORMATION?

It is our policy to retain your Personal Information for the length of time required for the specific purpose or purposes for which it was collected. However, we may be obliged to store some Personal Information for a longer time, taking into account factors including: 

• legal obligation(s) under applicable law to retain data for a certain period of time;
• statute of limitations under applicable law(s);
• (potential) disputes and
• guidelines issued by relevant data protection authorities.

Whilst we continue to process your Personal Information, we will ensure that it is treated in accordance with this Privacy Notice. Otherwise, we securely erase your information once this is no longer needed.

If you would like to find out how long we keep your Personal Information for a particular purpose you can contact us here.

For more information on how long cookies are stored, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

SECURITY

Our Websites are hosted on servers in the EEA. We employ appropriate security measures to help protect your Personal Information and guard against access by unauthorised persons. Information storage is on secure computers in a locked and certified information centre and information is encrypted wherever possible. We undergo periodic reviews of our security policies and procedures to ensure that our systems are secure and protected. However, as the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to our Websites.

CONFIDENTIALITY

We acknowledge that the information you provide may be confidential. We do not sell, rent, distribute or otherwise make Personal Information commercially available to any third party, except that we may share information with our service providers for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice. We will maintain the confidentiality of and protect your information in accordance with our Privacy Notice and all applicable laws.

YOUR RIGHTS  

You have the following rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you:

• Your right of access
  If you ask us, we’ll confirm whether we’re processing your personal information and, if necessary, provide you with a copy of that personal information (along with certain other details). If you require additional copies, we may need to charge a reasonable fee.
• Your right to rectification
  If the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you are entitled to request to have it rectified. If you are entitled to rectification and if we’ve shared your personal information with others, we’ll let them know about the rectification where possible. If you ask us, where possible and lawful to do so, we’ll also tell you who we’ve shared your personal information with so that you can contact them directly.
• Your right to erasure
  You can ask us to delete or remove your personal information in some circumstances such as where we no longer need it or if you withdraw your consent (where applicable). If you are entitled to erasure and if we’ve shared your personal information with others, we’ll let them know about the erasure where possible. If you ask us, where it is possible and lawful for us to do so, we’ll also tell you who we’ve shared your personal information with so that you can contact them directly.
• Your right to restrict processing
  You can ask us to ‘block’ or suppress the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances, such as where you contest the accuracy of that personal information or you object to us. If you are entitled to restriction and if we’ve shared your personal information with others, we’ll let them know about the restriction where it is possible for us to do so. If you ask us, where it is possible and lawful for us to do so, we’ll also tell you who we’ve shared your personal information with so that you can contact them directly.
• Your right to data portability
  You have the right, in certain circumstances, to obtain personal information you’ve provided us with (in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format) and to reuse it elsewhere or to ask us to transfer this to a third party of your choice.
• Your right to object
  You can ask us to stop processing your personal information, and we will do so, if we are:
  • relying on our own or someone else’s legitimate interests to process your personal information, except if we can demonstrate compelling legal grounds for the processing; or
  • processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Your right to withdraw consent
  If we rely on your consent (or explicit consent) as our legal basis for processing your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
• Your right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority
  If you have a concern about any aspect of our privacy practices, including the way we’ve handled your personal information, you can report it to the relevant Supervisory Authority.

Please note that some of these rights may be limited where we have an overriding interest or legal obligation to continue to process the data or where data may be exempt from disclosure due to reasons of legal professional privilege or professional secrecy obligations.

Collection of information by third-party sites and sponsors

The Site contains links to other sites whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult the other sites’ privacy notices as LexTax has no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. To ensure that you are always aware of how we use your personal information we will update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect any changes to our use of your personal information. When we make these changes we will publish the updated Notice on our Websites. If we make any significant changes, we will take additional steps to inform you of these.

HOW TO CONTACT US

If you wish to request further information or exercise any of the above rights, or if you are unhappy with how we have handled your Personal Information, contact us here: office@lextax.com. Please provide as much information as possible to help us identify the information you are requesting, the action you are wanting us to take and why you believe this action should be taken.

Before assessing your request, we may request additional information in order to identify you.  If you do not provide the requested information and, as a result we are not in a position to identify you, we may refuse to action your request.

We will generally respond to your request within one month of receipt of your request. We can extend this period by an additional two months if this is necessary, taking into account the complexity and number of requests that you have submitted.

We will not charge you for such communications or actions we take, unless:

• you request additional copies of your Personal Information undergoing processing, in which case we may charge for our reasonable administrative costs, or
• you submit manifestly unfounded or excessive requests, in particular because of their repetitive character, in which case we may either: (a) charge for our reasonable administrative costs; or (b) refuse to act on the request.

If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint or believe our processing of your Personal Information does not comply with data protection law, you can make a complaint to the relevant EU data protection authority where you are located. The contact details for each EU data protection authority can be found here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm. For Romania, the contact website of the National Authority is  http://www.dataprotection.ro/ .