Privacy

What we hold, why, and for how long. In plain words, because a privacy policy nobody can read is not consent.

The short version

Your Government Gateway details and authentication code

We keep them, and we say so plainly because most filing software says it does not. The submit screen asks for the company’s authentication code, which Companies House need with the accounts, and, when a return goes to HMRC, the Government Gateway user ID and password it is filed under.

Why we keep them: a submission is send-then-wait, and HMRC’s and Companies House’s services are sometimes unavailable. If your filing fails at 22:50 on the thirtieth of September it has to be sent again, and you will not be sitting at the computer. Holding the details is what lets that happen without you. How:

• They are encrypted the moment you press the button, to a key the website does not have. The website can put them away and cannot take them back out; only the machine that files can open them, and that machine is not reachable from the internet.
• They are tied to one filing. They cannot be used for another filing or another company, and they are never kept on your account for next year.
• They are deleted as soon as HMRC or Companies House confirm they have your filing, or if it is turned down, cannot be sent or is abandoned, and when you close your account. Each carries a limit of 30 days: one still held after that raises an alarm with us to delete it, because it should already be gone.
• They are never written to your saved answers, never shown back to you on a page, and kept out of every log. Credentials, references and sign-in links are stripped from every log line we write.

What else we hold, and for how long

Your email address Signing in with a link we email you, receipts, deadline reminders, and once a filing is done, one reminder a week later asking for a review	While you have an account
Copies of the emails we send you The address, the subject and the text, so we can tell you whether a message went. Sign-in and reminder links are blanked once sent	While you have an account
Your company's details, and its directors' names They come from the public register	While the filing exists
Your figures and answers, including the name of the director who approves the accounts They are the filing	While your account is open, or until you delete the draft. A draft started without an account has no end date: nothing deletes it yet
Your UTR It addresses the return to you	With the filing
Government Gateway details and authentication code So a filing that fails can be sent again without you	Until the filing is received; an alarm at 30 days
What we sent and what came back Your evidence that you filed	Kept, even after you close your account
A record of any payment Our accounting record: the amount, the date and Stripe's references. Stripe holds the card details, not us	Kept, even after you close your account
Whether you followed a review link, or asked never to be asked So the one review reminder is not sent to somebody who already went to Trustpilot or said no. Trustpilot learns nothing from us: the link only takes you there	With the filing; never to be asked, while you have an account
A request to be reminded of your deadlines Your address and the company, until you press the link we email you. The copy of that email, with its link blanked, is kept with the rest of our sent mail	The request: eight days
Your IP address, and any address typed into a sign-in or reminder form To stop abuse of the search and of our email. It is the only place in our database we keep your IP address	Up to a day, usually
Our logs Each request to the site is logged with the IP address it came from, the page and the time, so we can find what went wrong. If you are refused for asking too often, the line saying so also names the email address you typed. Credentials and sign-in links are stripped first	Kept by Google Cloud for 30 days

The IP address is counted in five-minute windows, and nothing reads a window once it has closed. It is not deleted at five minutes, though: a job deletes every window more than an hour old once a day, at 11:15 London time, so an address can be held for up to a day. If a run fails, the next day's deletes what it missed. Sign-in links that have been used or have expired, and sessions that have ended, go the same way a day after they stop working.

Your rights

You can see everything we hold about a filing on its review screen. Your account page downloads all of it as one file: every filing, its figures in a form a spreadsheet or a program can read, and every document exactly as it was sent and every receipt exactly as it came back. Take it whenever you like, and before you close your account.

You can close your account yourself, from the same page. It deletes your email address, every way of signing in, your drafts, your figures and answers, your reminders and every email we sent you or were about to. The page says exactly what goes and what stays before anything happens.

Two exceptions, and we would rather you knew them before you sign up than after you ask. We do not delete the documents we actually filed, or the receipts for them. They are the proof that the company met a legal obligation, and deleting them would hurt the person asking. And we keep the record of a payment that took money, because it is an accounting record; the account it belongs to stays as an empty record with your email address removed. What is kept is linked to nobody and cannot be reached by signing in or by its web address. If you need a copy later, email us with the company number and proof that you are, or act for, a director of the company, and a person will send it.

You can also ask us to correct what we hold, to stop using it while a question about it is settled, or to stop sending deadline reminders. Email us and a person will answer.

Who else sees it

HMRC and Companies House, because that is the point: they receive the return and the accounts you file. Beyond them, each only as much as its job needs:

• Google Cloud runs the site and holds the database, in London. Every document we filed and every receipt is held there.
• Cloudflare carries every request to this site, so it sees your IP address. Our visitor numbers come from Cloudflare’s own count of those requests: we add no analytics script and no tracking cookie.
• Resend sends our email, from its servers in Ireland. It sees your address and what the email says.
• Stripe takes the GBP 15 payment for an active company. It gets your email address and our reference for the filing, and holds the card details so that we never do.
• Healthchecks.io wakes us when something fails. An alarm can name a company number, our reference for a filing and the error, and never your email address or your Gateway details.

We look company numbers up on Companies House’s public register. Google, Cloudflare, Resend and Stripe are American companies, so some of what they handle may be processed outside the UK, though the database itself is held in London. Nobody else, and we do not sell anything to anyone.

Cookies

Only the ones the site needs to work. None tracks you, none is for advertising, and none is shared with anyone.

• filemytax_session keeps you signed in, for 30 days or until you sign out.
• filemytax_csrf stops another website sending a form here as you, for 30 days.
• filemytax_drafts remembers drafts this browser started without an account, so you can come back to them, for 90 days.
• filemytax_sent remembers which sign-in email this browser asked for, so the next page can say whether it went, for a day.
• CF_Authorization is set by Cloudflare Access while the site is open only to invited people. Access asks who you are before the site opens, and Cloudflare keeps that under its own policy.

Stripe’s payment page is on Stripe’s own site and sets its own cookies there, under Stripe’s policy.

Why we are allowed to

Most of this is needed to do what you asked: sign you in and file for the company. Keeping what was filed, and our payment records, is a legal obligation. Deadline reminders, the one review reminder and stopping abuse are our legitimate interests, and you can object to any of them. The review reminder carries a link that stops it, and any other review email, for good. Your Gateway details are taken only when you choose to enter them, on a page that says we keep them.

Who we are

The data controller is Polsia Limited, which trades as FileMyTax: a private limited company registered in England and Wales, company number 17480153.

Asking us anything

support@filemy.tax. If we get it wrong you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

Last updated 3 October 2026.