Talk to the people who would run your file: fixed fees agreed in writing before work starts, and a named adviser who answers for it.
Everything about how this practice runs comes from one decision: the fee is agreed in writing before the work starts, and it does not move.
Further down: how we work, what clients ask before engaging us, two completed files with figures, the way the work runs, and where the fee is published.
Everything about how this practice runs comes from one decision: the fee is agreed in writing before the work starts, and it does not move. That single commitment sets the scope conversation, the review standard and the way we say no to work we should not take.
One question decides the rest of the file. The difference between the two outcomes is a provision most people in this position have never heard of — and once it is identified, the rest of the file is straightforward.
I have been quoted by the hour before and had no idea what the final number would be.
I want to know who is actually reviewing my return, not which brand is on the letterhead.
My last accountant did not understand the second country at all.
That list is the reason this desk exists. Individually each question has an answer; together they need someone who holds both systems at once. See also vinayak indolia — cfo advisory.
The same point, with figures rather than adjectives.
Take C$66,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 19% on it and the home country would charge 41% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$66,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 19%) | C$12,540 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 41%) | C$27,060 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$12,540 |
| Home tax still payable | C$14,520 |
The credit absorbs C$12,540 and leaves C$14,520 payable at home, because the home rate on this income is the higher of the two. The balance is real cash and it is due on the home timetable, which is why instalments get raised in the first meeting. The interesting question is where your own figures fall relative to that, which is a computation rather than an opinion.
An illustration, not a client file. The sums are chosen for legibility and the thresholds are stated for the example alone — nothing reaches a filing until it has been confirmed at source for your own year.
The arithmetic is more persuasive than the description, so:
Take C$171,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 24% on it and the home country would charge 29% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$171,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 24%) | C$41,040 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 29%) | C$49,590 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$41,040 |
| Home tax still payable | C$8,550 |
The credit absorbs C$41,040 and leaves C$8,550 payable at home, because the home rate on this income is the higher of the two. The balance is real cash and it is due on the home timetable, which is why instalments get raised in the first meeting. The shape of that result holds; the size of it depends entirely on your own numbers and dates.
Example figures throughout, selected to make the rule visible, with rates and thresholds assumed for the demonstration. Your actual filing uses figures confirmed with the issuing authority for your tax year.
If a letter prompted this, bring the letter — it usually contains the answer to half the questions.
Reviewed for accuracy for the 2025 and 2026 filing seasons by Udit Gupta, Cross-Border Tax Expert, Legal Quotient Consultants. General information, not advice for your circumstances — call our 24-hour helpline to discuss your own position.
People reach this page searching for international tax accountant. It is covered here as it applies to about Legal Quotient — who it applies to, what has to be filed, and what it costs, at a fixed fee agreed before the work starts.
The enquiry was a straightforward request for one year's return. The scoping call established that a property had been sold in another country during that year, and that an election existed which had to be made with the return rather than afterwards. The engagement was written to include the sale, the supporting valuation and the election, with the fee agreed in writing before any preparation began. It produced the return, the election filed in time, and a note on file explaining the basis of the amounts used for the property, which the client can give to either authority.
A prospective client needed a domestic filing in a country this practice does not file in, with no cross-border element beyond his own uncertainty about whether one existed. The work consisted of one conversation and a short written note confirming that nothing in his facts created an obligation on the other side of the border. He was told the engagement was not one for this practice, and where the work properly belonged. No fee arose. The note he was given is enough to answer the same question himself if it comes back next year.
The client wanted to know whether a residence date used in a filed return could be supported. The work was deliberately narrow: read the return and the working papers, list the facts the position depended on, and say which of them were evidenced and which had been assumed. Two were assumptions. The engagement produced a written opinion setting out the position the evidence would support, what further documents would settle the open points, and what correcting the earlier year would involve if the client chose to. No return was prepared.
The client had not filed for a number of years and wanted one price for all of it. The first stage was scoped on its own: establish residence through the period, list the income sources, and confirm which years genuinely required a return, since some did not. Only once that was on paper was the preparation of the remaining years quoted, because until then nobody could say honestly what the work was. It produced a documented residence chronology, a schedule of the years that had to be filed, and a fixed fee for each stage agreed before that stage started.
The file arrived with returns but no working papers, and the previous preparer had relied on a treaty article the client could not explain. The work began with reconstruction: identify from the returns themselves what had been claimed, request the missing correspondence, and establish whether the article relied on applied to the facts. It did, for a reason that had never been recorded in the file. The engagement produced the working paper that should have existed, a memorandum recording the position, and a current-year return built on the same basis rather than on a new one.
The question arrived as a tax question about an inheritance abroad, but the answer depended on who was entitled under the foreign succession rules and whether the estate had been administered at all. We said so in writing, and set out the facts that would have to be settled by counsel before any filing position could be taken. The engagement produced a short scoping note listing those questions and what each one would change on the tax side, so the client could instruct a lawyer with a specific brief rather than an open one.
Nearly every relief in a mobility file — treaty exemption, residence, social security — is decided by a day count that has to be evidenced. The engagement puts the tracking in place at the start, because it cannot be reconstructed at the end.
Read how this one runsA remittance out of India needs its tax position certified before the bank will process it. The file establishes the character of the funds, produces the certification, and keeps the position consistent with the returns already filed.
Read how this one runsAll case studies — every published engagement in one place.
Strategy and compliance for income, assets and families spread across borders.
Software revenue crosses borders by default — sourcing rules, withholding on licence-like payments and IP location decide the effective rate.
Software revenue is rarely taxed where the team sits. Licence, subscription and service income are characterised differently by each side, and the answer decides withholding at source, treaty relief and whether a foreign customer creates a taxable presence at all — questions that are cheap to settle before the contract and expensive afterwards.
On the first call we establish the scope — countries, years, entities, filings — and quote a fixed fee for it in writing. If the scope changes we re-quote before continuing, and nothing is filed until you have approved it.
That is how most of these engagements run. They keep the domestic file, we take the cross-border piece, and the boundary is agreed in writing so nothing is done twice or missed.
The fee agreed in writing before work starts is the fee for the work described in it. If something surfaces that sits outside that description — an unfiled year nobody mentioned, a second country, an entity that was not on the list — the work stops and you are told what it is, what it would add, and what happens if it is left alone. Nothing outside the agreed scope is done first and billed afterwards. Most files never reach that conversation, because the scoping call exists precisely to find those items before a number is written down.
No, and that is a deliberate constraint rather than modesty. The practice is cross-border: residence, treaty positions, filings on both sides of a border, and the documentation that supports them. Work that is purely domestic in a country where we do not file, or that needs a legal opinion rather than a tax one, is better done by someone who does it every week. If a file is declined you are told why and, where we can, pointed towards the kind of practice that should have it. No fee arises on a file we do not take.
The practice runs from offices in India, the United States, Canada and the UAE, and the work is the traffic between them: someone moving, earning, or holding assets in more than one of those places. Where a filing has to be made by a person registered in another country, that is arranged and disclosed to you, but the position all the filings rest on is owned in one place by one adviser. For anything outside that list, the honest answer is that you would be told so before the engagement rather than after.
No, but the first work changes. Instead of preparing a return, the engagement starts by establishing what has already been said to the revenue authority and on what basis, since a new adviser who contradicts the earlier correspondence without knowing it exists makes the file worse. Bring every letter, including the ones you would rather not show. The scope is then written around responding to what has actually been asked, and the fee for that is agreed in writing before anything is drafted, the same as on any other file.
Ask them for the filed returns, the working papers behind them, and any correspondence with the revenue authority, and send those before the first call rather than after. What matters is not the returns themselves but the positions taken in them — a residence date, an election, a credit claimed — because a file that changes position without saying why invites the question of which year was wrong. Where an earlier treatment looks unsupportable you are told plainly, along with what correcting it would involve, before the scope and the fee are agreed.
Because an hourly quote transfers the risk of an unfamiliar problem onto the person least able to price it. A cross-border file has a shape an experienced practice can see at the scoping stage, and where it cannot be seen, that is itself worth saying before you commit to anything. Agreeing the fee in writing first also disciplines the scope: it forces both sides to write down which years, which countries and which entities are included, and that list is the same one that stops work being missed later.
It is an agreement between two countries that divides up the right to tax. Article by article it decides which country taxes employment income, dividends, interest, royalties, pensions, property and business profits — and where both may tax, it caps what the source country can withhold and tells the other to give credit. It also breaks residence ties and opens a government-to-government channel for disputes. What it never does is apply itself: a treaty position is claimed. See our treaty work.
A branch keeps one taxpayer: results consolidate at home, losses are usable sooner, and the exposure is that the branch is a permanent establishment whose profit the host country taxes, sometimes with a branch tax on repatriation. A subsidiary is a separate taxpayer with limited liability and local rates, at the cost of withholding on dividends home and transfer pricing on everything between them. The deciding facts are usually expected losses, liability and exit plans. See branch against subsidiary.
Where our partners studied — CPA Canada (In-Depth Tax Program), AICPA, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.
