Privacy policy (company)
Who is responsible, and who can you contact?
We, tax advisor Dr. Birgitt Grandjean and attorney-at-law and notary Ralph-Thomas Pretner, with their registered office in Frankfurt am Main, are responsible for processing your personal data. You can contact us or our data protection officer for all data protection inquiries as follows:
Responsible persons
grandjean.pretner
Steuerberater, Rechtsanwalt, Notar
Dr. Birgitt Grandjean
Gustav-Freytag-Straße 26
60320 Frankfurt am Main
T: +49 69 5680 3990
E: frankfurt@grandjean-pretner.com
Ralph-Thomas Pretner
Gustav-Freytag-Straße 26
60320 Frankfurt am Main
T: +49 69 5680 3990
E: frankfurt@grandjean-pretner.com
Data Protection Officer
Ansgar Pretner
Gustav-Freytag-Straße 26
60320 Frankfurt am Main
T: +49 69 5680 3990
E: datenschutz@grandjean-pretner.com
2. What data do we process and where does the data come from?
We process personal data that we receive from you or from third parties, particularly in relation to a legal or tax matter commissioned by you or to fulfill legal obligations.
Depending on the nature of the mandate and the information provided to us or obtained during the mandate, the "mandate data" may contain various types of personal data. The types of personal data we typically process in relation to a mandate include client contact details and communication data. In addition, as part of the legally required verification process, we process a copy of an identification document (e.g., an identity card), including all personal data contained therein.
Depending on the mandate, we also process "special categories of personal data" within the meaning of Art. 9 (1) GDPR (e.g., health data or religious affiliation). Of course, we limit the processing of personal data, especially sensitive personal data, to the necessary minimum.
3. For what purposes and on what legal basis is the data processed?
As licensed tax advisors, we are authorized to provide professional assistance in tax matters in the affairs of others, in accordance with Section 2 of the Tax Advisory Act (StBerG).
A lawyer is the appointed independent advisor and representative in all legal matters, in accordance with Section 3 of the Federal Lawyers' Act (BRAO).
A notary holds a public office. Official activity is performed in the performance of a task that is in the public interest of the general public in orderly preventive administration of justice and thus in the public interest, and in the exercise of official authority. Your data will be processed exclusively to perform the notarial services requested by you and, if applicable, other persons involved in a transaction in accordance with official duties, in particular the preparation of draft documents, the notarization and execution of deeds, or for the provision of advice.
The processing of personal data is therefore always carried out solely on the basis of the professional and procedural regulations applicable to us, which essentially arise from the Tax Advisory Act, the Federal Lawyers' Act, the Federal Notary Act, and the Notarization Act.
These provisions also give us a legal obligation to process the required data (Article 6 (1) GDPR). Failure to provide the data we request from you would therefore result in us being forced to refuse (further) execution of the contract.
4. Who do we share data with?
As tax advisors, lawyers, and notaries, we are subject to a statutory duty of confidentiality. This duty of confidentiality also applies to all of our employees and those commissioned by us. We may therefore only disclose your data if and to the extent that we are obligated to do so in individual cases or if you have instructed us to do so, e.g., due to notification obligations to the tax authorities, or to public registers such as the land registry, commercial or association register, central will register, pension register, courts such as probate, guardianship, or family courts, or to public authorities. As part of professional and administrative supervision, we may also be obligated under certain circumstances to provide information to the Chamber of Tax Advisors, the Chamber of Bars, the Chamber of Notaries, or to a supervisory authority, which in turn are themselves subject to a duty of confidentiality. Otherwise, your data will only be disclosed if we are obligated to do so based on declarations you have made, or if this is done as part of the assignment.
5. How long will your data be stored?
We process and store your personal data in accordance with our statutory retention and documentation obligations (in particular, the Federal Notification of Claims Act, the German Commercial Code, the Criminal Code, the Money Laundering Act, or the Tax Code) and professional regulations for the purpose of conflict resolution.
Your data will be deleted or the paper documents destroyed unless we are obligated to retain or document them.
6. What rights do you have?
You have the right:
- to request information about whether we process personal data about you, if so, for what purposes we process the data and which categories of personal data we process, to whom the data has been forwarded, if applicable, how long the data will be stored, and what rights you are entitled to.
- to have inaccurate personal data concerning you stored by us corrected. You also have the right to have us supplement any incomplete data record stored by us.
- to request the erasure of personal data concerning you, provided that there is a legally stipulated reason for erasure (see Art. 17 GDPR) and the processing of your data is not necessary to fulfill a legal obligation or for other overriding reasons within the meaning of the GDPR.
- to request that we process your data only to a limited extent, e.g., to assert legal claims or for reasons of important public interest, while we, for example, examine your right to rectification or objection, or if we reject your right to erasure (see Art. 18 GDPR).
- to object to processing where it is necessary for us to perform our tasks in the public interest or to exercise our public office, if there are reasons for the objection that arise from your particular situation.
- to lodge a data protection complaint with the supervisory authorities. The supervisory authority responsible for us is the Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, PO Box 3163, 65021 Wiesbaden, Telephone: +49 611 1408-0, Fax: +49 611 1408-900, Email: poststelle@datenschutz.hessen.de
- The complaint may be lodged with any supervisory authority, regardless of jurisdiction
Privacy policy (website)
We are committed to protecting the privacy of your personal data. For that reason, we process your data exclusively in accordance with the legal requirements (GDPR, Federal Data Protection Act [BDSG]). The purpose of this privacy information is to acquaint you with the most important aspects of data processing that come to bear when you visit our website.
General data collection activities during website visits
Every time a data subject or an automated system accesses the website, we collect a range of general data and information. This general data and information is stored in the server's log files. The data and information we collect are:
- an internet protocol address (IP address),
- the data and time of accessing the website,
- the exact page accessed on our website,
- the website from which you accessed our website (known as the referer),
- the browser used and the version of this browser,
- and the operating system used to access our website.
We process this data for the following purposes:
- to warrant a smooth connection with the website,
- to optimise content for you on our website,
- and to warrant system security and stability.
These points are both in your and our legitimate interest. Where necessary, we also use this data to meet our legal obligations in dealings with law enforcement agencies. We will never use the data collected to identify you as a person. The legal basis for this processing is article 6 (1) (f) GDPR. We store these log files for a period of 2 months.
Contact by e-mail, telephone or post
So we can address your concerns at all times, we also process personal data when you contact us by e-mail, telephone or post. We only process the data you provide when you contact us, especially name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and other personal details that may be included in the description of your concern. In fact, this data will be stored for the length of time it takes to address your concern. Especially if you contact us within the scope of an existing contractual relationship or a contractual relationship is established by you contacting us, we will store this data for a prolonged period of time in conformity with our documentation and retention obligations.
During this time, we will not disclose the data you provided when you contacted us to third parties without due authorisation. The legal basis for processing the data may be any of the following: legitimate interest in communication with new prospective customers (Article 6[1][f] GDPR), your consent (Article 6[1][a] GDPR) and, when making contact within the scope of an existing contractual relationship or if a contractual relationship is established by initiating such contact, the necessity to perform a contract (Article 6[1][b] GDPR) and/or the need to comply with a legal obligation (Article 6[1][c] GDPR).
Contact form
If you contact us using the form available on our website or by email, or send us your application, we will process the data you provide as well as the above mentioned general data. By using our form you agree that we may process your data. We will not disclose this data to any third party and will use the data exclusively for processing your request and for answering your enquiry. Your consent according to article 6 (1) (a) GDPR forms the legal basis for processing your data. In case you contact us by email, the basis is article 6 (1) (f) GDPR. The data we collect during this process will be deleted as soon as it is no longer required for the purpose you provided it. This is the case when the respective conversation is finished. This in turn is the case when your enquiry appears to be resolved completely. If you contact us for placing a contract, a further legal basis is article 6 (1) (b) GDPR. In this case we keep your enquiry as a business letter for 7 years.
Your rights
Generally, you enjoy the following rights: the right to access your data, the right to rectification of your data, the right to erasure of your data, the right to restrict processing of your data, the right to data portability and the right to object to the processing of your data. If you believe that the processing of your data is in breach of data protection law, or your rights under data protection law are otherwise infringed, you may file a claim with the supervisory authority. A list of the competent supervisory authorities classified by Länder is available at www.datenschutz-wiki.de.
You will find further information on your rights at BFDI - Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information.
Contact
Please address all inquiries, declarations and questions relating to data use to Ansgar Pretner.
Protection against spam
To protect against spam and misuse, we use the Friendly Captcha service on your forms. This does not process any personal data.
Cookies and local data storage
To improve your browsing experience, we use small text files known as "cookies" and other methods ("storage methods") to store data on your end device (e.g. in the local storage of your browser) to process your preferences and to enrich your user experience on our website. We do not use cookies and other storage methods to track your visits to our website. Cookies and other storage methods are routinely used by most websites today. If you are concerned about this, you can also set your browser to accept neither cookies nor other storage methods.
Matomo
We use Matomo to learn more about how visitors interact with our website. For that purpose, we collect certain data on visitors‘ behaviour on our website. We combine these data and use it to perform statistical analyses on an aggregated level. Among the data we collect and process are for example:
- which of our website’s sub-sites a visitor is navigating to,
- how long a visitor remains on our website,
- from which other website a visitor navigated to our website („referer“).
These data are collected and processed strictly anonymously. That means that we are not able to deduce information on any individual website visitor or identify them. Also, we do not combine these data with data from other sources, do not disclose these data to third parties within or outside of the European Union and do not use these data for individual profiling or solely automated decision-making.
You may object to the analyisis of your behaviour on our website, even though it is performed anonymously and no personal information is used in the process:
Responsible party within the terms of Article 13 (1) (a) GDPR
grandjean.pretner Steuerberater Rechtsanwalt Notar
Gustav-Freytag-Straße 26
60320 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
