What Section 7216 Is, and Why It Exists
Section 7216 of the Internal Revenue Code is a criminal statute aimed squarely at people in our line of work. It makes it a crime for a paid tax return preparer to disclose your tax return information to anyone else, or to use it for any purpose other than preparing and filing the return you hired us to prepare, unless you have given written consent or a narrow exception applies.
Congress wrote it that way for a reason. To prepare a return you hand a stranger your Social Security number, your income, your bank accounts, your dependents, and often your business records. Section 7216 makes confidentiality the default, so you never have to ask for it. "Tax return information" is broader than the return itself: it covers everything you give us, everything we calculate from it, and the fact that you are our client at all.
You never have to sign either of the forms on this page. The regulation is explicit: "The consent must be knowing and voluntary… conditioning the provision of any services on the taxpayer's furnishing consent will make the consent involuntary, and the consent will not satisfy the requirements of this section." (26 CFR 301.7216-3(a)(1).)
Declining changes nothing about your price, your service, or whether we take you on as a client. If you say no, we will not ask again for a substantially similar consent for that return, because federal law forbids it (26 CFR 301.7216-3(b)(3)).
This page is an explanation, not the consent form. Federal law requires each consent to be signed as its own standalone document, on its own screen, with nothing else on that screen. Nothing you click here consents to anything. When a consent is needed, we deliver it as a separate signable document in our secure client portal.
The Difference Between a Consent to Use and a Consent to Disclose
The law draws a hard line between the two, and so do we.
| Consent to USE | Consent to DISCLOSE | |
|---|---|---|
| What happens | Your information stays inside the firm, but we use it for something other than preparing and filing your return. | Your information leaves the firm and goes to someone outside it. |
| Example | Reading your Schedule C to see whether monthly bookkeeping would help you, then telling you about it. | Sending your Form 1040 to the lender underwriting your mortgage. |
Because the two are legally distinct, one document can never do both: "A single written document, however, cannot authorize both uses and disclosures; rather one written document must authorize the uses and another separate written document must authorize the disclosures." (26 CFR 301.7216-3(c)(1).) Hence the two separate forms below.
Neither consent is needed for the work you hired us to do. Preparing and filing your federal and state returns needs no consent, and a few other disclosures are allowed without it, such as complying with a court order or a lawful IRS request.
Form 1: Consent to Use Tax Return Information
CONSENT TO USE TAX RETURN INFORMATION
Tax return preparer: Xelvon Tax Advisors LLC. Taxpayer: the individual signing, who types their own full legal name into the form.
Federal law requires this consent form be provided to you. Unless authorized by law, we cannot use your tax return information for purposes other than the preparation and filing of your tax return without your consent.
You are not required to complete this form to engage our tax return preparation services. If we obtain your signature on this form by conditioning our tax return preparation services on your consent, your consent will not be valid. Your consent is valid for the amount of time that you specify. If you do not specify the duration of your consent, your consent is valid for one year from the date of signature.
The particular use authorized. You authorize Xelvon Tax Advisors LLC to use your tax return information for one purpose only: to determine whether any of the services listed below would be useful to you, and to contact you about them. It does not authorize us to give your information to anyone outside the firm.
The specific services we may tell you about under this consent, and no others: monthly bookkeeping and financial reports for your internal management use; catch-up and clean-up bookkeeping; payroll processing and payroll tax filings; filing of Forms 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC; sales tax return filing; tax planning, projections, and quarterly estimated tax calculations; S-corporation election on Form 2553; reasonable-compensation analysis; and Employer Identification Number applications on Form SS-4.
The tax return information we may use. Your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number; your filing status; the presence and type of self-employment, business, rental, or farm income; whether you paid wages; your estimated tax payments; the balance due, underpayment penalty, or refund shown on your return; and the states for which we prepared a return.
Duration. This consent expires one year from the date you sign it. Sign on August 10, 2026 and it expires on August 10, 2027, and that date is printed on your copy. Federal law sets no maximum, but we cap every consent at one year as firm policy. You may write in a shorter period, and we will honor it.
If you believe your tax return information has been disclosed or used improperly in a manner unauthorized by law or without your permission, you may contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) by telephone at 1-800-366-4484, or by email at complaints@tigta.treas.gov.
Signature block. The signable form ends with three lines you complete: your printed full legal name; your signature, entered by typing your full name and pressing Enter or by typing the five-character personal identification number we assign you; and the date you sign.
Form 2: Consent to Disclose Tax Return Information
CONSENT TO DISCLOSE TAX RETURN INFORMATION
Tax return preparer: Xelvon Tax Advisors LLC. Taxpayer: the individual signing, who types their own full legal name into the form.
Federal law requires this consent form be provided to you. Unless authorized by law, we cannot disclose your tax return information to third parties for purposes other than the preparation and filing of your tax return without your consent. If you consent to the disclosure of your tax return information, Federal law may not protect your tax return information from further use or distribution.
You are not required to complete this form to engage our tax return preparation services. If we obtain your signature on this form by conditioning our tax return preparation services on your consent, your consent will not be valid. If you agree to the disclosure of your tax return information, your consent is valid for the amount of time that you specify. If you do not specify the duration of your consent, your consent is valid for one year from the date of signature.
The intended purpose. To send your tax return, or the parts of it you identify, to a third party you name, so that party can evaluate an application or transaction you have started with them.
The specific recipient. You write the recipient's name on the form, and we send nothing to anyone you have not named in writing. Clients commonly name a mortgage lender, a bank or credit union, an immigration attorney, a university financial aid office, a landlord, or a business partner.
The tax return information to be disclosed. You choose between a complete copy of the return you identify and a limited set of items you list yourself, such as adjusted gross income, taxable income, filing status, the number of dependents, or a single schedule. If you authorize disclosure of your entire return, you still have the ability to request a more limited disclosure of tax return information as you may direct, and we will follow that direction. To send to more than one recipient, you affirmatively select each one. There are no pre-checked boxes and nothing to opt out of.
Duration. This consent expires one year from the date you sign it. Sign on August 10, 2026 and it expires on August 10, 2027, and that date is printed on your copy. Federal law sets no maximum, but we cap every consent at one year as firm policy. You may write in a shorter period — 30 or 60 days suits a single lender request — and we will honor it.
If you believe your tax return information has been disclosed or used improperly in a manner unauthorized by law or without your permission, you may contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) by telephone at 1-800-366-4484, or by email at complaints@tigta.treas.gov.
Signature block. The signable form ends with three lines you complete: your printed full legal name; your signature, entered by typing your full name and pressing Enter or by typing the five-character personal identification number we assign you; and the date you sign.
Neither form carries the extra statement federal law requires when tax return information goes to a preparer located outside the United States. If that ever applies to your engagement, we will give you a different form carrying that language before anything is sent.
How We Obtain Your Consent in Practice
- Separate, standalone document. Never buried in an engagement letter, our Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy, a cookie banner, or a blanket "I agree" checkbox. Any of those would make it invalid.
- Its own screen in the secure client portal, holding nothing but that one consent and the navigation controls, in the portal's normal text size and printable. Use and disclosure are never combined on one document.
- You opt in, item by item. Opt-out consents, where you would have to remove what you do not want, are prohibited and we do not use them.
- You sign it yourself. The portal never auto-fills your name or signature, and you get a printable copy the moment you sign, plus a permanent copy in your portal.
- No blanks, no edits. We never give you a form with blank spaces for us to fill in later, and never alter a consent after you sign.
- Never backdated, and never requested after we have given you your completed return to sign.
- One ask. If you decline, that is the end of it for that return.
How to Revoke a Consent
Email privacy@xelvontax.com or send a secure portal message with your name, which consent you are withdrawing, and the date you signed it. You can also call (435) 341-4014, though we will ask you to confirm in writing. No fee, no form.
What revocation does. We stop the authorized use or disclosure promptly, and no later than three business days after we receive your request. Anything not yet sent is cancelled.
What revocation cannot do. It works forward only and does not undo a disclosure already made. If we already sent your return to a lender, that lender still has it, and revoking your consent with us does not require them to return it, delete it, or stop using it — which is exactly what the mandatory warning about further use and distribution is telling you. To have a third party destroy what it received, ask that party directly. Revocation also does not affect what we may do without consent, such as preparing and filing your returns, keeping required records, or answering a lawful IRS request.
You need not revoke anything for a consent to end. Every consent we issue expires on its own, one year after signature or sooner if you set a shorter period.
Penalties for Violating Section 7216
These penalties fall on us, not on you. We list them so you know the promise on this page is backed by criminal and civil liability.
| Provision | Type | Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| IRC 7216(a) | Criminal | Misdemeanor. Fine of not more than $1,000, imprisonment of not more than one year, or both, plus the costs of prosecution. The maximum fine rises to $100,000 where the disclosure or use is one to which IRC 6713(b) applies. |
| IRC 6713(a) | Civil | $250 for each improper disclosure or use, capped at $10,000 per calendar year. |
| IRC 6713(b) | Civil | $1,000 for each improper disclosure or use tied to a crime involving misappropriation of another person's taxpayer identity, capped at $50,000 per calendar year, applied separately from the cap above. |
To report a preparer who has misused your tax return information, contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at tigta.gov or 1-800-366-4484. You can read the rules yourself at the IRS Section 7216 Information Center, in 26 CFR 301.7216-3, and in Revenue Procedure 2013-14, which supplies the mandatory wording reproduced above.
Questions and Contact
Ask us anything about these forms before you sign one. We would rather answer questions than have you sign something you have not read.
- Consent questions, revocations, privacy requests: privacy@xelvontax.com
- Current clients: support@xelvontax.com
- New clients and general questions: hello@xelvontax.com
- Phone: (435) 341-4014, Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time, year-round, with extended hours from late January through April 15
Xelvon Tax Advisors LLC is a Utah limited liability company operating entirely online. We have no public office and hold no in-person meetings, so send notices about consents by email or secure portal message, or call us. Joseph Edwin Fox is our Managing Member.
Related pages: Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Security, and Disclaimer. Effective August 10, 2026.