Privacy

Last updated: 5 November 2026

TaxCourtHelp is a free guide to the US Tax Court, run by Liam Williams as a personal project. It is not run by a company. Liam decides how the information below is used, so under UK data protection law he is its controller. To ask anything about it, or to use any of your rights, email privacy@taxcourthelp.com.

What is collected, and why

If you sign up for the newsletter. Your email address, and your name if you give one; when you signed up and last signed in; whether you are subscribed; your approximate location, worked out from your IP address when you sign up; and which links you click in the newsletters, so Liam can see which articles readers find useful. Opens are not tracked. The newsletter is sent because you asked for it and confirmed by the link we emailed you (consent): every email has an unsubscribe link. Counting clicks is in Liam's legitimate interest in improving the guide.

When you read the site. The site counts page views with its own analytics: the page, the site you came from, your browser and device details (the user agent your browser sends) and its language, and a country worked out from your time zone. To count visitors without cookies, your IP address and browser details are turned into a one-way code that changes every day; the IP address itself is not stored. The counting sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. If you are signed in as a member, the visit is recorded against your member account. The counts help decide what to write and fix; this is Liam's legitimate interest, and the law lets the site gather these statistics without asking first, as long as you are told and can say no. You can turn this off for your browser here. If you do, a small note of that choice is kept in your browser so that it stays off; nothing else is stored. It is also off if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal.

To deliver and protect the site. The host and its network provider see your IP address and the requests your browser makes, to serve the pages and to block attacks (legitimate interests).

If you email. Your email address and what you write, to answer you and, if you report a mistake, to correct it (legitimate interests). Liam reads these emails himself, and they are never put into the AI tools that make the guides.

People in the cases. Articles explain published court decisions. The guides are researched and drafted with AI tools, which read those decisions (see How these guides are made), and Liam approves every guide, and every change to one, before it is published. Guides written from November 2026 cite each case by its published name, as lawyers do, and refer to the people in it by their role (the petitioner, the taxpayer); only judges and public officials are named, for what they did in that role. They take details only from the published decision, and use a health or criminal detail only where it matters to the legal point, citing that case by its reference alone. Older guides are being brought into line, those with health or criminal details first. This is writing for publication in the public interest, which the law treats as a special purpose. If a case of yours is discussed and something is wrong, email privacy@taxcourthelp.com and it will be corrected.

Nothing is sold, there are no adverts, and no decision about you is made automatically.

Who else handles it

• Magic Pages (Austria) hosts the site, its newsletter and its analytics, on Hetzner's servers in Germany, with backups in Finland.
• Mailgun sends the newsletters, from its EU region.
• Cloudflare delivers the pages and protects them from attack.

Each handles the information only for the site: Magic Pages under its data processing agreement with Liam, and Mailgun and Cloudflare as Magic Pages' subprocessors under the same terms. The site's data is held in the EU, the page view counts included. Mailgun's and Cloudflare's staff may reach it from the US, under the approved contract clauses for such transfers.

Emails to privacy@taxcourthelp.com are forwarded by IONOS, which holds the site's domain, to Liam's own mailbox at Zoho, which keeps them in the US. Emails to the site's other addresses, at mail.taxcourthelp.com (contact@mail.taxcourthelp.com and the newsletter's own), are received by Mailgun in the EU and forwarded by Magic Pages to the same mailbox.

Anthropic, which makes the AI tools used to research and draft the guides (Claude), receives the published decisions they read, and so the names and other details in them. Through Liam's Claude subscription it handles them as its own controller, under its privacy policy (for the UK, Anthropic Ireland, Limited), and the setting that lets it train its models on them is off. Some of the work goes through its API instead (reviews of the published guides, a trial fact-check of one new guide, and drafts and re-checks of corrections), where it handles them under its commercial terms and data processing agreement, which bar it from training its models on them. It may handle them in the US under the approved contract clauses. Members' and readers' details, and emails sent to the site, are not given to it.

How long it is kept

• Your member record: while you are subscribed, and deleted within 12 months after you unsubscribe or your address stops working. You can ask for it to be deleted at any time.
• Emails: as long as the conversation needs, then up to two years.
• Page view counts: as statistics, for as long as the site runs. The host's technical logs: up to five days, and backups up to three months. Cloudflare's records of requests: up to 32 days. Mailgun's newsletter delivery and click records: about 30 days.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what is held about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its use, and take it elsewhere. Unsubscribing withdraws your consent to the newsletter. Email privacy@taxcourthelp.com and you will get an answer within one month. If a request is complex, or you send several, that can be extended by up to two more months, and you will be told why within the first month.

If you are unhappy with how your information is handled, tell Liam first at privacy@taxcourthelp.com: he will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and tell you the outcome without undue delay. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or 0303 123 1113.

The site is not meant for children.