Privacy Policy

Who we are

CapGainsTaxCalc.com, published as The Capital Gains Ledger ("we," "us," "our"), is an independent educational publisher of free capital gains tax calculators and reference guides for the United States. This Privacy Policy explains what information is and is not collected when you visit our website, how cookies are used, and the choices and rights you have. It applies to the pages served under the capgainstaxcalc.com domain.

Our business model is simple: the tools are free, and the site is supported by display advertising through Google AdSense. We do not sell products, we do not operate accounts or logins, and we do not build marketing profiles of our readers.

Do you store the numbers I type into the calculator?

No. Our calculators are built as self-contained pages: the entire tax computation is performed locally by JavaScript running inside your own browser. When you enter a sale price, cost basis, purchase and sale dates, filing status, income, or state of residence, those values are processed on your device and displayed back to you on your device. They are never sent to our servers, never written to a database, and never logged.

Because the math is client-side, closing or refreshing the tab clears your figures (unless you saved a link yourself). We designed it this way on purpose: financial inputs are sensitive, so the safest place for them is nowhere but your own browser.

What information do you collect?

We aim to collect as little as possible. Specifically:

• Financial inputs (sale price, basis, income, dates, filing status, state): never collected, per the section above.
• Personal identifiers (name, email, address, phone): we do not require or request any of these to use the calculators. We only receive an email address if you choose to write to us at the contact address below.
• Standard server logs: like most websites, our hosting provider may automatically record basic technical request data such as IP address, browser type, referring page, and time of visit for security, abuse-prevention, and aggregate traffic purposes. This is standard web-server operation and is not linked to any calculator input.
• Advertising and cookie data: our advertising partner, Google, may collect information through cookies and similar technologies as described below.

Which cookies does this site use?

We keep our own footprint minimal. The site uses browser local storage to remember your light/dark theme preference so the page looks the way you left it — this stays on your device and is not a tracking cookie. We do not set first-party analytics or advertising cookies of our own.

The cookies you are most likely to encounter here are set by Google AdSense and its advertising partners, described next. Cookies are small text files a site or its partners place on your device; you can view, block, or delete them through your browser settings at any time, though blocking some cookies may affect how ads are displayed.

How does Google AdSense use cookies?

We display advertising served by Google AdSense (publisher ID ca-pub-4943534579898039). In connection with those ads:

• Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies — including the DoubleClick/AdSense cookie — to serve ads to you based on your prior visits to this website and other websites across the internet.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this and/or other sites on the internet.
• Third-party vendors and ad networks may also use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to serve and measure ads and to report on ad performance.
• Google may associate this activity with an advertising identifier to limit how many times you see a given ad and to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

You can learn more about how Google uses information from sites that use its services, and the cookies it sets, at policies.google.com/technologies/ads and policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. We do not control the cookies set by Google or other ad vendors and are not responsible for their privacy practices; please review their policies for full details.

How can I opt out of personalized advertising?

You have several ways to control or turn off personalized ads:

• Google Ads Settings: visit https://adssettings.google.com to review and turn off Google's personalized advertising.
• Google advertising policy & controls: see https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads for how Google uses advertising cookies and how to opt out.
• Industry opt-out tools: use the Digital Advertising Alliance at aboutads.info, the Network Advertising Initiative at networkadvertising.org, or, in Europe, youronlinechoices.eu.
• Your browser: you can block or delete cookies and reset your advertising identifier through your browser or device privacy settings.

Opting out of personalized ads does not remove ads — you may still see non-personalized ads, which are based on general context such as the page content rather than your prior browsing.

What rights do California residents have?

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the CPRA, California residents have the right to know what personal information is collected, to request access to or deletion of it, to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

We do not sell your personal information for money. Some privacy laws treat the use of advertising cookies as a "sale" or "share" of personal information; to the extent that applies, you can opt out using the personalized-ad controls above, and Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signals will be honored where required. Because our calculators do not transmit your financial inputs, we hold almost no personal information about you to begin with. To make a CCPA request, contact us using the details below.

What rights do EU and UK residents have?

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, the GDPR and UK GDPR give you rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to the processing of your personal data, and to data portability. Where we rely on consent — for example, for advertising cookies — you may withdraw it at any time via your browser settings or the opt-out links above, and where advertising is offered on a consent basis you will be asked before non-essential cookies are set.

The legal bases we rely on are your consent (for advertising cookies) and our legitimate interests in operating a secure website and funding it through advertising. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. To exercise your rights, contact us below.

Children's privacy

This site is intended for a general adult audience interested in U.S. tax information and is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 in the EEA/UK). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Data security & retention

Our site is served over HTTPS. Because calculator inputs never leave your browser, there is no server-side store of your financial data to secure or retain. Standard technical server logs, where kept by our host, are retained only for the limited period needed for security and operational purposes and are not combined with calculator inputs. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but minimizing what we collect is our first line of defense.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, our advertising partners, or the law. When we do, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of this page. Material changes will be reflected here; your continued use of the site after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

How to contact us

Questions about this policy, or requests to exercise a privacy right, can be sent through our contact page. We read every message and aim to respond to verified privacy requests within the timeframe required by applicable law.