Finished cross-border files, published with what came in, what was filed and what it cost — so you can judge us before you call.
The claims on this site are deliberately few: fixed fees agreed in writing before work starts, 15+ years of cross-border experience, 18,000+ clients served across 4 global offices, a 5.0/5 Google rating, and a helpline that answers 24 hours a day.
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.
The claims on this site are deliberately few: fixed fees agreed in writing before work starts, 15+ years of cross-border experience, 18,000+ clients served across 4 global offices, a 5.0/5 Google rating, and a helpline that answers 24 hours a day. Anything that cannot be evidenced does not go on a page.
Start with the mechanism, not the form. The general rules are the same for everyone; the provision that changes the answer is not. That is why a general adviser applies the default and stops, and why the relief written for this group goes unclaimed year after year.
Every firm says the same things — I want to see the actual outcome.
I want to know what a file like mine looked like when it was finished.
I need to see that someone has handled my exact combination of countries.
We hear versions of all three most weeks. The confusion is structural rather than personal: nothing in either system is designed to explain the other. See also what is in a written quote.
It is easier to see with numbers attached.
Take C$163,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 23% on it and the home country would charge 29% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$163,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 23%) | C$37,490 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 29%) | C$47,270 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$37,490 |
| Home tax still payable | C$9,780 |
The credit absorbs C$37,490 and leaves C$9,780 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. That is an illustration of the mechanism, not a prediction about your file — the same computation on your figures is the first thing we do.
Treat these numbers as a worked example rather than advice — they exist to make the mechanics visible, and the rates and thresholds are assumed for the illustration. For a real filing, we verify each figure with the authority that publishes it, for your year.
This is what the rule produces when you put figures through it.
Take C$95,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 26% on it and the home country would charge 34% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$95,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 26%) | C$24,700 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 34%) | C$32,300 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$24,700 |
| Home tax still payable | C$7,600 |
The credit absorbs C$24,700 and leaves C$7,600 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. Your version of this table is the useful one, and it takes a short call and a document pack to produce.
The figures here are an illustration, not an engagement: amounts are picked so the mechanism is easy to follow, and every rate or threshold is an assumption of the example. Before anything is filed for you, each one is confirmed with the issuing authority for your own tax year.
The first call establishes whether there is work to do. Everything after that is quoted.
Checked and signed off 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.
Most readers of this page are looking for personal international tax accountant. What follows sets out how it works for what a personal audit turns on: who is caught by it, what has to be filed, and what the work costs, agreed before it begins.
The client's instinct was to send everything he had, in the order he found it. The work consisted of doing the opposite: taking each figure the letter questioned, identifying the document that supports it, and sending a schedule running claim by claim with the supporting page behind each one. What the engagement produced was a review that ended at the claims named in the letter. Material sent that nobody asked for still gets read, and what it raises becomes the next question. A reviewer who can find the answer without hunting has no reason to go looking.
The travel claim rested on a log that had never been kept properly. Rather than reconstruct one and present it as contemporaneous, the work established the journeys independently: the appointment records showing where he had to be and when, the client correspondence confirming the visits, and the fuel and service records bracketing the distances. It went in as what it was, a reconstruction with its method stated. The engagement produced a partly sustained claim, a written record of the basis for it, and a logging routine for the current year so the same argument does not recur.
The claim had been calculated on floor area alone, which is where the conversation usually starts and almost never ends. The reviewer's question was use, not size: whether the space was used for the work claimed, and whether anything else happened in it. The work consisted of establishing the pattern of use from the client's own calendar and from the nature of what he did there, then recalculating the claim on a basis that reflected it. What it produced was a smaller claim that stood, in place of a larger one that would not have.
A category of expense was disallowed as personal in the year under review. Read alone, that year did support the reading. The work consisted of setting the claim in the context of the years either side — the same expenditure, the same purpose, accepted previously, and tied to income that had been reported throughout. That history was assembled and submitted with the underlying documents. What the engagement produced was reinstatement of the claims that both the pattern and the records supported. A single year taken out of its context is easy to read as something it is not.
The first response answered the question asked and, in passing, referred to an arrangement nobody had enquired about. The next letter asked about that. The work from there consisted of dealing with the new question properly and completely, then returning the review to its original scope by closing the original claims with their documents. What the engagement produced was both matters resolved, and a rule applied to everything sent afterwards: answer the question in the letter, evidence it fully, and volunteer nothing that is not responsive to it.
The claim turned on who was entitled to it, and both parents had taken a position. The reviewer's question was not about the money paid but about the arrangement it was paid under. The work consisted of reading the separation agreement, establishing what it actually required of each party, and matching the payments to those obligations. What it produced was a documented entitlement resting on the agreement itself rather than on the payment record alone. Where the agreement is silent, or the payments do not follow it, the claim gets decided on facts neither parent controls.
Most notices are proposals rather than assessments, and they carry a response window that is shorter than it looks. The engagement reads what is actually being proposed, gathers the support, and replies inside the window with the position rather than a request for time.
Read how this one runsResidence is decided on ties, not on a form, and the review asks for evidence of every one of them. The file assembles the ties that were severed and the ones that remained, and answers the questionnaire against the treaty rather than around it.
Read how this one runsAll case studies — every published engagement in one place.
Strategy and compliance for income, assets and families spread across borders.
Cross-border tax for sellers shipping worldwide: marketplace withholding, foreign registrations and inventory nexus handled before they become audits.
Marketplaces withhold, remit and report in their own right, so the tax position of a single sale is decided by where the stock sat, where the buyer was and which platform collected — not by where the company is registered. We reconcile the platform's own filings against the returns before either is submitted.
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.
Most reviews are not accusations. Returns are selected in several ways — a claim that is large relative to the income reported, a figure that does not match what a third party reported about you, a first-time claim in a category the authority tests routinely, and straightforward sampling. The letter itself usually tells you which claim is in question, and that is the most useful thing in it. A review directed at one claim stays directed at one claim unless the answer raises something new. Treating it as a general investigation, and volunteering material nobody asked about, is how it becomes one.
Something made at the time, by someone other than you where possible, showing what was bought, from whom, and that you paid for it. A supplier invoice with your name on it is the strong form. A card statement showing a payment is weaker, because it proves the payment and not the purpose. Your own note of what something was for is weakest, and is worth keeping anyway, because it is often the only thing connecting an entry to the claim. The question the reviewer is answering is not whether you spent the money. It is whether it was spent for the purpose claimed.
Often, but on weaker footing. Copies can usually be obtained from suppliers, and card and bank records establish the payments. What cannot be recreated is a record that had to be made at the time, and a claim depending on one of those is in a different position from a claim depending on an invoice you can request again. Where reconstruction is the only route, do it openly: set out the method, the source of each figure, and where an estimate has been used. Presented that way it is evidence of a lower order. Presented as though the records still existed, it is worse than useless.
No, and this is the part people find hardest. The claim was made by you, and the material supporting it is in your hands, so establishing it is your responsibility. A reviewer who is not satisfied does not have to disprove anything; the claim is disallowed and the return assessed without it. That is why an answer arguing the principle without producing the records rarely succeeds, however correct the principle is. The argument worth having is about what the documents show. The argument about who ought to prove what has already been settled, and not in your favour.
Sometimes that is the right answer, and it is worth separating the claims rather than defending all of them together. Where a claim was overstated or cannot be supported, conceding it early and in writing narrows the review to what remains, and a reviewer who sees one part accepted tends to test the rest on its merits rather than on suspicion. Where a claim is right and evidenced, defend it. What does damage is arguing everything with equal force, because the weak items undermine the credibility of the strong ones and the whole return ends up reassessed.
The claims in question are disallowed and the return is reassessed without them, with the balance and interest following. Silence is not neutral; it is treated as an inability to support the claim. Answering, even to say that some records will take time to obtain and to ask for that time, keeps the question open and keeps you in a conversation rather than in front of a decision already made. Reopening a disallowed claim afterwards is possible, but it is a longer route, and it starts from an assessment you now have to displace.
Moving your own capital between your own accounts is not itself income, so the transfer is not what creates tax. What can create tax or reporting is the income the money earned before it moved, a foreign-exchange gain on certain holdings, and the reporting obligations the balances themselves trigger — foreign account and asset reports keyed to balances rather than income. Remittances out of some countries also need certification before the bank will send them. See foreign account reporting.
Foreign income is income sourced outside the country you are filing in — where the work was done, where the property sits, where the payer is resident, depending on the type. A foreign tax, for credit purposes, is a levy imposed by another country that functions as an income tax and that you were legally required to pay. Consumption taxes, property taxes and most social contributions are not, however real the cost. Sourcing is decided by rule, not by which bank received it. See the foreign tax credit.
Where our partners studied — CPA Canada (In-Depth Tax Program), AICPA, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.
