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.
On this page: how the practice runs, the questions clients ask first, two finished files with their numbers, how an engagement runs, and the fee it starts from.
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. Two people with identical incomes and identical passports can owe completely different amounts because one of them falls inside a provision the other does not. That is the whole reason this page exists as its own page rather than as a paragraph on a general one.
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.
None of those is unusual and none of them is a reason to be embarrassed. They are the normal consequence of a system that asks an individual to reconcile two sets of rules that were never designed to fit together. See also rush work and late filings — how we price them.
Put numbers against it and the shape of the answer is obvious.
Take C$135,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 20% on it and the home country would charge 26% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$135,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 20%) | C$27,000 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 26%) | C$35,100 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$27,000 |
| Home tax still payable | C$8,100 |
The credit absorbs C$27,000 and leaves C$8,100 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.
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.
Worked through with figures, the mechanism looks like this.
Take C$100,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 18% on it and the home country would charge 34% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$100,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 18%) | C$18,000 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 34%) | C$34,000 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$18,000 |
| Home tax still payable | C$16,000 |
The credit absorbs C$18,000 and leaves C$16,000 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.
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.
Describe the situation in your own words; translating it into forms is our job.
Checked and signed off for the 2025 and 2026 filing seasons by Udit Gupta, Cross-Border Tax Expert, Legal Quotient Consultants. Published as general information. For a position on your own file, call the 24-hour helpline.
People reach this page searching for international tax accountant. It is covered here as it applies to in the press — who it applies to, what has to be filed, and what it costs, at a fixed fee agreed before the work starts.
The file arrived after the move had already happened and the return for the year of departure had not been prepared. The work began with establishing the date residence actually ceased, which is a question of facts rather than of the day a flight left. From there the holdings were sorted into those that fall inside the departure rules and those that do not, and the reporting obligations that survive the move were listed. The engagement produced a filed return for the departure year, a schedule of assets with the basis for each treatment recorded, and a note of what still has to be filed each year afterwards.
A reader asked what a backfile actually involves, so this one was written up. The client held accounts abroad and had reported the income but not the accounts themselves. The first task was scope: which years were open, which accounts met the reporting test, and whether the omission was an oversight or something more. Records had to be reconstructed from bank statements, and the narrative that accompanies a disclosure was drafted before anything was submitted, because the explanation is the part that gets judged. The engagement produced a complete set of filings, the supporting schedules behind them, and a written record of the reasoning.
Two related companies in different countries had been trading with each other on terms nobody had written down. The work started with what was actually happening — who performed which functions, who carried which risks, and which entity owned what. Only then was a method chosen, because a method picked before the facts are understood tends to describe the arrangement the adviser expected rather than the one that exists. Comparable arrangements were gathered and the reasoning for accepting and rejecting each was recorded. The engagement produced a documentation file capable of being handed to a reviewer, and a list of the intercompany terms that needed to change.
The owner had been declaring the rent in the country where the property sits and assumed that settled it. It did not. The write-up follows the order the work took: establish where the person is resident for tax, then bring the foreign income into the resident country's return, then work out what relief the foreign tax gives and which year it belongs to. Expense records had to be rebuilt from a property manager's statements. The engagement produced amended returns for the open years, a foreign income schedule for each, and a standing method the client can follow without help next time.
An employer had staff working in one country while being paid from another, and had been running a single payroll for everyone. The published file sets out what had to be established first: where each employee was physically working, what their contracts actually said, and which employer bore the cost. Withholding was then tested person by person rather than as one arrangement, because the answer differs by individual. The engagement produced corrected withholding going forward, a schedule of what had been under-remitted historically, and a written policy the employer's own staff can apply when somebody moves.
This one was published because the reasoning is more interesting than the result. The client's circumstances put them arguably resident in both countries, and the treaty's tie-breaking sequence had to be worked through in order rather than jumped to the step that suited. Each step was evidenced with documents the client already held — where the home was kept, where the family lived, where the day-to-day life ran from. The engagement produced a residency position with a memorandum behind it, returns filed consistently in both countries, and a file that could be handed to a reviewer without further explanation.
A cross-border return prepared on one side only is usually right in isolation and wrong in combination. The review checks residence, source and relief in that order, and says plainly whether an amendment is worth making.
Read how this one runsWhere the grant, the vesting and the exercise happen in different countries, each may claim part of the same gain. Apportioning it across the period worked is what prevents the whole amount being taxed twice.
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.
Ask for finished work rather than testimonials. A firm that will show you what arrived, what was filed and what the engagement cost is making a claim you can test; a firm that will only show you praise is not. Read one published file end to end and see whether the reasoning holds together — whether the position taken is explained, whether the documents relied on are named, whether the outcome follows from the work described. Then ask who reviewed it. If the answer is a department rather than a person, you have learnt something. Our fee is agreed in writing before any work starts, which is the other thing you can check in advance.
They are real engagements, written up after they closed and stripped of anything that could identify the client. That means no names, no employers and no distinguishing detail about the person. What stays is the part that is useful to a reader in the same position: what the situation was when it arrived, which rule turned out to govern it, what had to be gathered, in what order the work was done, and what the engagement produced. If a file went badly, or a position we took was later argued with, that is the sort of thing worth publishing too. A write-up that only ever ends well is an advertisement.
Because price is the question most people are actually asking and the one most firms answer last. An hourly rate tells you very little: it is a unit, not a total, and the total depends on facts you do not yet know. Publishing the fee attached to a finished file tells you what that shape of work came to, so you can see whether your own situation is near it or nowhere near it. It also disciplines us. A fee agreed in writing before work starts has to be arrived at honestly, because the scope conversation is where the number is decided and there is no later stage at which it can be revisited quietly.
Yes. That is what this page is for. Pick the write-up closest to your own circumstances and read it as though you were the client in it. The useful test is whether you can follow why one rule applied rather than another, because that judgement — not the arithmetic — is where cross-border files are won and lost. If nothing published here matches your position, say so when you ring. It is more useful to hear the facts of an unusual file than to have someone read you a page you have already read. The number is +1 (416) 619-0068.
Very little on its own. Coverage records that a journalist wanted a comment, not that a firm files well. What is worth reading is the substance of the comment. If an adviser quoted in a piece explains a mechanism — why a withholding is calculated on a gross amount rather than on a profit, say, so that it routinely exceeds the tax eventually due — that is a signal about how they think. If the quote is a slogan about service, it is not. Treat press mentions the way you would treat a reference: useful for what the person said, not for the fact that they were asked.
Yes, where there is something to learn from. Some positions are simply not available, and the honest work is documenting why, so that the filing is defensible if it is looked at. A file that ends with a correct return and a bill the client did not want is still a finished file, and reading one tells you more about how a practice behaves under pressure than a run of comfortable ones does. It also sets expectations properly before you engage. The worst outcome in this work is a client who discovers late that the answer was never going to be the one they were hoping for.
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.
Only up to your own country's tax on that same income, and only for tax you were legally obliged to pay. Two consequences follow. Living somewhere that taxes you more heavily than your residence country does leaves an excess that becomes a carryover rather than a refund. And withholding suffered above the treaty rate is not creditable — the route back to that money is a refund claim in the country that took it. See claiming the 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.
