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.
This is the point most filings get wrong. 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.
If any of that sounds familiar, it is because it is the standard experience of anyone in this position. The rules were not written to be read together, and nobody is given a map. See also raghav gupta — UAE & India international, cross-border tax & tp.
This is what the rule produces when you put figures through it.
Take C$131,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 31% on it and the home country would charge 30% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$131,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 31%) | C$40,610 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 30%) | C$39,300 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$39,300 |
| Home tax still payable | C$0 |
The credit fully absorbs the home liability on this income, so nothing further is payable at home — but the return still has to be filed and the credit still has to be claimed, by category and by country. The shape of that result holds; the size of it depends entirely on your own numbers and dates.
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.
Put numbers against it and the shape of the answer is obvious.
Take C$150,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 32% on it and the home country would charge 43% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$150,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 32%) | C$48,000 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 43%) | C$64,500 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$48,000 |
| Home tax still payable | C$16,500 |
The credit absorbs C$48,000 and leaves C$16,500 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.
These amounts illustrate the mechanism only. The rates and thresholds are assumptions of the example, not your numbers: each is checked against the issuing authority for your specific tax year before any return is filed.
Bring last year's returns and we will tell you what is missing.
Read and approved for the 2025 and 2026 filing seasons by Udit Gupta, International Tax, Cross-Border Tax & Transfer Pricing Expert, Legal Quotient Consultants. This is general information rather than advice about your file — a short call is the way to get the second.
If you came here for international tax services office, this is where it is dealt with. The subject is contact & offices, and the page covers who it reaches, what then has to be filed, and what we charge to do the work.
The owner had left Canada, kept a property, and had been treating the rent as though nothing had changed. Non-residents are taxed on that income under a different mechanism, and part of the obligation sits with whoever pays or manages the rent rather than with the owner. The residence position was established first, then the withholding arrangements, then the question of whether to be taxed on the net rent rather than on the gross. The engagement produced an election on file, returns for the years affected, and a property manager who knows what to remit and when.
Tax had been withheld on a payment to the client at a rate applied to the whole amount rather than to the income the country was entitled to tax, which is how withholding routinely exceeds the liability it secures. The work was in the evidence: establishing the cost base and the expenses that reduce the taxable amount, in a currency the records had not been kept in. A return was then filed to determine the actual liability. The engagement produced a filed non-resident return, a documented computation behind it, and a claim for the excess that had been withheld.
The claim depended on documents the client could not download and a certificate that had to be requested in person at the branch. Nothing about the tax analysis was difficult; the timetable was. The request was made at the start of the engagement rather than when the return was otherwise ready, handled through the office in the country where the branch sits, and chased against the filing date on the other side. The engagement produced the certificate in time to support the claim, a return filed on the treaty position, and the correspondence kept with the file.
The client's two countries ran on different tax years, so income earned in one period was reported across two filings on the other side, and the credit for tax paid abroad kept being claimed in the wrong year. The remedy was a reconciliation rather than a recalculation: one schedule mapping each income item to the period each country taxes it in, then filings built from that schedule in the order the credits require. The engagement produced consistent returns on both sides, a mapping the client can reuse each year, and workings explaining why each credit sits in the year it does.
The related entities sat in different countries, kept their records differently, and each had assumed the other held the documentation. The work was largely coordination: a single list of what was needed, split by entity, with a person named against each item and a date it was due. The analysis followed once the functions on both sides had been described by the people who actually perform them rather than by head office. The engagement produced one documentation file covering both entities, agreements matching what it describes, and a review calendar for the following year.
The prospective client wanted a position filed that the documents did not support, and said plainly that a previous adviser had refused it. The meeting was spent on what the rule requires and what evidence it would need, which made clear that the evidence did not exist and could not be created after the fact. No engagement was opened. What was provided instead was a written note of what would have to be true for the position to be arguable at all. Declining work is part of how the fee stays fixed on the files that are taken on.
India does not tax the inheritance itself, but the later sale and the money leaving the country both have positions of their own. The file establishes the cost base to use on that sale and what the remittance will require.
Read how this one runsReturning restarts Canadian residence and re-values what you own on the day you arrive. Foreign pensions, employer plans and accounts opened abroad each land differently, and the reporting thresholds are tested against the whole portfolio rather than each account.
Read how this one runsAll case studies — every published engagement in one place.
Strategy and compliance for income, assets and families spread across borders.
Foreign property income and sales are taxed in both countries by default; Section 216, FIRPTA and treaty credits are the standing toolkit.
Property is taxed where it sits, which is the one rule no treaty overrides. What the treaty does decide is the credit, the rate on the rent and what happens on the sale — and the clearance certificate on a disposition is applied for before closing, not after the buyer has already held the money back.
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.
Which office suits you depends on where your records and your filing obligations sit rather than on where you live. There are offices in India, the United States, Canada and the UAE, and a cross-border file frequently touches two of them. Where a meeting helps, and it usually does at the start of a complicated matter, it is worth arranging one. Between meetings, documents are exchanged through secure cloud software and returns are signed electronically, so the file does not wait on the post. The first thing to settle is which country's return drives the timetable, because the other is generally built from it.
Through the secure workspace set up for your file rather than as email attachments. Email is convenient and it is the wrong place for a passport page, a bank statement or an identification number, because copies persist in several mailboxes and neither party controls them all. The workspace also keeps the file in one order, which matters when a return is built from documents in two currencies and two tax years. Name the files plainly as you upload them. An adviser reading a folder of scans named by the scanner has to open every one of them to find the slip they need.
Three things make the first conversation useful. The dates: when you arrived, left or changed status, and what happened to the home, the bank accounts and the employment on each side. The income types: employment, rental, business, investment and pension, each with the country it came from. And any letters already received from a tax authority, in full, including the ones that look like form letters. With those, the residence question can usually be narrowed on the call and the scope written afterwards. Without them, the call becomes a description of the tax system, which you can read anywhere.
Yes, and it is worth insisting on that wherever you go. On a cross-border file the decisions that matter, meaning which country taxes what, which treaty article applies and what has to be reported where, are made by whoever builds the return, and information passed through an intermediary loses the detail that changes those answers. Ask who is named on your file and what they have handled like it. The fee is agreed in writing before work starts, and the person who agrees that scope with you is the person answering for it.
Less than the documents do. What holds a cross-border file up is almost always a statement from an institution abroad, a foreign assessment that has not been issued yet, or a certificate that must be requested rather than downloaded. Those have their own timetables and no amount of correspondence shortens them. The remedy is ordering: ask for the slow documents at the start of the engagement rather than when the return is otherwise ready. Where a filing date on one side depends on a figure coming from the other, that dependency is identified when the scope is written.
One file, prepared with both systems in view, is usually less risky than two preparers who never speak. The failure mode with separate advisers is not incompetence; it is that each applies its own country's default and neither owns the interaction. A credit gets claimed on one return for tax the other return has not finalised, or an item is reported in both places because each assumed the other would not. Where a local specialist is genuinely needed, the sensible arrangement is one adviser holding the whole position and instructing the other, with the figures reconciled before either return is filed.
In this order. Fix your residence under each country's own rules, and if both claim you, apply the treaty tie-breaker. Identify where each type of income is sourced. Read the article that covers that income type, because it decides who taxes and at what maximum rate. Then claim the relief on the residence-country return, with proof of the foreign tax. Most of the tax people lose to double taxation is lost at the last step, not the first. See how double taxation is relieved.
The treaty has a procedure for exactly that. You apply to the competent authority in your residence country, which takes the case up with its counterpart, and the two negotiate a position that removes the double taxation. Some treaties add binding arbitration if they cannot agree. It is slow and it runs on documents, so the practical work is preserving the record and filing protective claims while the clock runs. See our treaty work.
Where our partners studied — CPA Canada (In-Depth Tax Program), AICPA, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.
