Privacy policy

Who we are

incomeaftertax.co.uk is run by Jorge Machado, a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. For the purposes of UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), Jorge Machado is the data controller for the personal data described on this page.

• Email: [email protected]
• Postal address: [postal address to be added]
• ICO registration number: [ICO registration number to be added]

If you have a question about your data, or want to use any of the rights listed below, email us. We reply within one month, as the law requires, and usually much sooner.

In short

• You can use the calculator without giving us your name or email address. We record the figures you enter and the result, with a shortened hash of your network rather than your IP address.
• Google Analytics measures your visit only if you press Accept on the cookie banner. Reject and no analytics cookie is set and nothing that identifies you is sent.
• If you give us your email address to unlock a breakdown or to sign in to the invoicing tool, we use it for that and for the emails described below. Every list email has an unsubscribe link.
• Invoicing data (your business details, your clients and your invoices) is stored to provide that tool to you. Bank details and PDFs are encrypted before they are stored.
• We may publish anonymous statistics, such as how many people checked each salary band. We do not sell, rent or share any individual record.
• Where no retention period is set, data is kept until you ask us to delete it.

The calculator

What we collect

When you run a calculation, your browser sends the figures you entered to our server: gross income, employment type, tax year, pension contributions and how they were entered, and whether you are in Scotland. Student loan repayments are worked out in your browser and never sent to our server. The server stores:

• gross income, employment type, tax year, pension contributions and how they were entered, and the result (personal allowance, taxable income, income tax, National Insurance, take-home pay and the effective rates). Whether you chose Scotland is used for the calculation but not stored;
• how long the calculation took;
• a shortened hash of the network part of your IP address (the first three groups of an IPv4 address, or the first 48 bits of an IPv6 address, passed through SHA-256 and cut to 16 characters). We do not store the address itself;
• your browser's user agent string, a device type derived from it (mobile, tablet or desktop), the address of the page the request came from, and the date and time.

Your full IP address is used in memory, and not stored, to limit how many requests one caller can make in a short time.

Why, and on what basis

We use these records to see which salaries and options people check, to find and fix calculation errors, and to keep the service running and free from abuse. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in running and improving the calculator. The records are not stored with a name or an email address. The network hash is a shortened form, not true anonymisation: the same hash is stored with an email unlock request made from the same network, so the two could be linked.

Our server also writes operational logs, kept by Fly.io. When you open an unlocked breakdown, the log line records the email address and gross income on your unlock token. Logs do not otherwise contain the figures you enter.

How long

There is no automatic deletion of calculation records. They are kept until you ask us to delete it. Because the records are not tied to your identity, we may not be able to find the ones that are yours; tell us when you used the calculator and from where, and we will do what we can.

Google Analytics (only if you accept)

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how people find and use the site. It runs in Consent Mode: every kind of storage is set to denied before the page loads, and Google Analytics only starts measuring if you press Accept on the banner. If you press Reject, or do nothing, no analytics cookie is set and nothing that identifies you is sent. The Google script itself still loads on every page, so Google sees the request for it and may receive cookieless pings that carry no identifier; this is how Google's Consent Mode works. Your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage so you are not asked on every page.

If you accept, Google receives the pages you view and a set of named events describing what you did: for example that a calculation ran, the salary or salary band it was for, the student loan plan chosen and the result shown, that a page was shared, or that an invoice was issued and its total. Events never carry your name, your email address, your clients' details or the contents of an invoice. Email us if you want the full list of events.

Our lawful basis is your consent. You can withdraw it at any time: the button below forgets your choice and stops measurement on this page, and the banner will ask you again.

Change my cookie choice

Google processes this data under its own terms. We have not switched on Google Signals or advertising features, and we do no personal profiling. How long Google keeps event data is set in our Analytics account; Google's own policy is linked in the providers table below.

The email unlock and our emails

What we collect

If you ask to unlock your full percentile breakdown, we store your email address, the gross income and percentile the breakdown was for, the same shortened network hash as the calculator, a one-time verification token, whether you have verified, and when you asked. Clicking the link in the email verifies your address and gives your browser a 30-day token that unlocks the breakdown; the token is kept in your browser's local storage.

We also keep a log of every email we send: the address, which template was sent, whether it was delivered to our email provider, and when. If you unsubscribe, we keep your address and the list you left so that we keep honouring that choice.

Why, and on what basis

• Sending the breakdown link you asked for: this is the service you requested, so our basis is performance of that request (contract).
• The occasional follow-up emails the form tells you about (such as tax tips for your band, how you compare to other earners, or news about our tools): your consent, which you give when you submit the form. Each of these is sent at most once, and every one carries an unsubscribe link.
• The send log and the opt-out record: our legitimate interest in sending each email once, and our legal duty not to email people who have unsubscribed.

How long

A verification link works for seven days. There is no automatic deletion of subscriptions or the send log: they are kept until you ask us to delete it. Opt-out records are kept until you ask us to delete it too; bear in mind that deleting one means we no longer know you unsubscribed.

Invoicing accounts

What we collect

The invoicing tool at /invoices is a signed-in service. There is no password: you give your email address, we email you a sign-in link that works once and expires after 15 minutes, and your browser then holds a session token for seven days in local storage. We store your email address, when you signed up and last signed in, and a hash of the current sign-in link (never the link itself).

To produce your invoices we store what you put into the tool:

• Your business profile: trading name, contact name, address, contact email, phone number, logo, VAT registration and number, invoice numbering, payment terms, and the figures you give us to estimate what to set aside for tax (last year's bill, whether this is your first Self Assessment year, whether you also have PAYE income, your estimated expenses, what you have put by, and your Making Tax Digital status).
• Bank details for the payment block on your invoices: account name, sort code and account number, which are encrypted by our application before they reach the database, and the payment reference, which is not.
• Your clients: name, contact name, address, email address and notes. These are your clients' personal data. You decide what to enter; we process it on your behalf to prepare and store your invoices.
• Invoices and payments: line items, totals, VAT, dates, notes, payment records, and a frozen copy of your details and your client's details at the moment an invoice is issued.
• PDFs and logos are encrypted by our application and stored in Cloudflare R2 under a key only our server holds.

Why, and on what basis

All of this exists to provide the service you signed up for: our basis is performance of a contract with you. Sign-in link emails are part of that service and are never marketing; you cannot unsubscribe from them, because they are the only way in.

How long

Your data is kept while your account exists. You can delete draft invoices and archive clients in the tool. Issued invoices can be voided but not deleted, because they are business records: HMRC requires sole traders to keep their records for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year. To close your account and have everything deleted, email us from the address you signed up with; we will tell you first if anything must be kept to meet a legal duty.

Tax reminder emails

If you have an invoicing account with a business profile, we email you about 14 days and 2 days before each Self Assessment payment date (31 January and 31 July) with the amount our tool estimates you owe. To do this we record which reminder was sent to which account for which deadline, and we keep a copy of the figures each email showed. Both are kept until you ask us to delete it.

Our basis is our legitimate interest in making the tool useful to the people who use it: the reminders are about a deadline that affects you and use figures you already gave us. They are switched on for every account, and you can turn them off at any time with the unsubscribe link in any reminder or the Tax reminders switch on the Your business screen. Both record the same opt-out, and either one stops them.

Tips through Stripe

The "Buy me a coffee" button opens a Stripe payment page. Stripe takes the payment and handles your card details under its own policy; they never reach us. Stripe shows us, in our Stripe account, the amount and the contact details you gave it. Our basis is our legal duty to keep accounting records.

The embeddable widget

Other websites can embed our calculator. When the widget loads, it tells our server the domain of the site it is embedded on, which we log to see where the calculator is used. Calculations run through the widget are recorded exactly as described under The calculator. The widget sets no cookies and never shows the tip jar or the cookie banner.

Cookies and local storage

We set no cookies of our own. Google Analytics sets its cookies only after you accept. Our pages use your browser's local storage, which stays on your device and is not sent to us, for:

• your cookie banner choice;
• the 30-day token that unlocks your breakdown after you verify your email;
• the 7-day invoicing session token after you sign in.

Clearing site data for incomeaftertax.co.uk in your browser removes all of it.

The companies that process data for us

We do not run our own servers. These companies process data on our behalf, under contracts that bind them to use it only to provide their service to us. Some of them are based outside the UK, or run servers outside it; where that is so, the transfer is covered by the safeguards in that provider's data processing terms, which include the UK's approved transfer mechanisms.

We do not share personal data with anyone else, and we never sell it. We would disclose it only if the law required us to.

Statistics we may publish

We may publish or share anonymised, aggregate statistics drawn from calculator use, such as the number of calculations run in a month or how many people checked each salary band. These figures are counts across many people; no individual record, email address, invoice or client detail is ever published, shared or sold.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it;
• rectification: have inaccurate data corrected (you can edit your invoicing profile and clients yourself);
• erasure: have your data deleted, subject to records we must keep by law;
• restriction: ask us to stop using your data while a question about it is resolved;
• object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including the tax reminders;
• portability: receive the data you gave us in a machine-readable form;
• withdraw consent at any time where consent is our basis (analytics and the follow-up emails), without affecting what was done before.

To use any of these, email [email protected]. We may ask you to confirm the request from the email address we hold for you. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though we would welcome the chance to put things right first.

How to unsubscribe

• Breakdown follow-ups: use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of them. It works with one click and needs no sign-in.
• Tax reminders: use the unsubscribe link in any reminder, or turn off the Tax reminders switch on the Your business screen of the invoicing tool.
• Sign-in links: sent only when you request them, and there is no list to leave.
• The breakdown you asked for: always sent, because you have just requested it. Its unsubscribe link stops the follow-ups.

Each list is left separately, so leaving one does not affect the other. Unsubscribing stops the emails but does not delete your account or your data; email us if you want that too. The unsubscribe link is personal to your address, so anyone who has the email can use it; do not forward it.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change affects what we collect or how we use it, we will say so on the site.