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.
Below: how the practice runs, what clients ask first, two worked files with their numbers, the process end to end, and the published fee.
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.
Read this first; the rest is procedure. That is the practical value of a specialist here: not better arithmetic, but knowing which of several possible rules governs security & your data before the return is built on the wrong one.
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.
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 fixed fee against hourly, stage by stage.
Worked through with figures, the mechanism looks like this.
Take C$122,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 24% on it and the home country would charge 39% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$122,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 24%) | C$29,280 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 39%) | C$47,580 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$29,280 |
| Home tax still payable | C$18,300 |
The credit absorbs C$29,280 and leaves C$18,300 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.
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.
The same point, with figures rather than adjectives.
Take C$77,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 28% on it and the home country would charge 35% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$77,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 28%) | C$21,560 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 35%) | C$26,950 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$21,560 |
| Home tax still payable | C$5,390 |
The credit absorbs C$21,560 and leaves C$5,390 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. We run this on your actual numbers before advising anything, because the conclusion can invert with a modest change in inputs.
Illustrative figures, not a client engagement: the amounts are chosen to make the mechanism legible, and the rates and thresholds are assumptions stated for the example only. We confirm every one of them against the issuing authority for your own tax year before anything is filed.
Send us the facts and we will tell you what has to be filed and what it costs.
Reviewed against current guidance 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.
This is the page to read on international tax accountant. It takes security & your data in order — the test that decides who is affected, the returns and forms that follow from it, and a fee quoted in writing before anything starts.
The client arrived with years of identity documents and bank statements scattered through an email thread with a former adviser. Before any preparation began we opened an engagement folder, issued upload links and asked for everything to come again through that channel. The thread was then deleted at both ends, with a short written note of what it had contained. The engagement produced a complete document set in one place, a written record of what was destroyed and where, and a filing prepared without a single identity document sitting in a mailbox.
The client had given a former preparer their personal tax authority login, and that preparer had since closed. We did not ask for the login. The client changed the password, and we filed a representative authorisation in the client's own name so that access sat with a named person and could be withdrawn by the client at will. The engagement produced a clean authorisation on the account, a credential the client alone controls, and a written handover note listing what the former adviser was known to hold so the client could ask for it back.
A client with reporting obligations in two countries asked that documents relating to a family matter not be visible to staff outside the country the matter concerned. We split the engagement into separate scopes before signing, with separate folders and separate access, and used an anonymised description when a treaty question had to be discussed across the group. The engagement produced two filings prepared from the same facts, an access list the client had approved in advance, and no circulation of the sensitive material beyond the office that needed it.
A former client rang after a letter arrived reopening a year we had filed some time earlier. Because the working papers had been retained with the file rather than discarded at the end of the engagement, the support for the position taken was assembled without asking the client to reconstruct anything. The engagement produced a written reply citing the documents that existed at the time of filing, the source records attached in the order the authority had asked for them, and a position that stood on evidence already held.
A client's bookkeeper had given a contractor full access to the accounting system so that one report could be produced. We listed what that access actually reached, which included payroll records and banking detail unrelated to the report, and set up a restricted role and a scheduled export instead. The engagement produced a written access map of who could see what, a reduced permission set for every outside party, and a standing instruction the client's own staff now follow when someone asks for access to the books.
A client decided partway through a year to move their work elsewhere. We assembled everything held for them, including the source documents they had uploaded, the working papers behind the filings already made and the correspondence with the tax authority, and sent it as one indexed package to the adviser they named. The engagement produced a handover the incoming adviser could work from without re-interviewing the client, a written list of what had been sent, and the withdrawal of our representative authorisation once the handover was acknowledged.
Who employs, who directs and who bears the cost are the facts a treaty article turns on, and an assignment letter is where they are recorded. Drafting it with the tax position in view prevents an argument later.
Read how this one runsReasonable cause is a documented story with dates, not an assertion of good intent. The engagement assembles what the client actually knew and when, and puts the sequence in writing alongside the filings it explains.
Read how this one runsAll case studies — every published engagement in one place.
Strategy and compliance for income, assets and families spread across borders.
Performance income is taxed where earned — Regulation 105 in Canada, withholding agreements in the U.S. — with special treaty articles overriding the usual rules.
Performance income is taxed where the performance happens, and the deduction is usually taken at source on the gross fee before expenses. Recovering the difference is a filing exercise in the other country, and it only works if the tour, the residency and the withholding certificates were documented while the work was being done.
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.
Documents come in through secure cloud software and stay in the folder that belongs to your engagement. They are not copied into a general mailbox and they are not forwarded to anyone outside the team named on your engagement letter. When a return is filed the working papers stay with the file, because a reassessment long afterwards is answered from the same evidence that supported the original position. If you want a copy of anything held for you, it is yours on request and it goes back through the same channel it arrived on.
You can, but we would rather you did not. An email attachment sits in two mailboxes and on every device that syncs them, which puts identity documents somewhere neither of us controls. The upload link we send puts the same file straight into your engagement folder, and it can be revoked. If email is genuinely the only option open to you, send the document and then tell us by phone, and we will move it into the file and ask you to delete the message. The point is not ceremony. It is keeping the number of copies of your passport small.
The people working on it and the adviser who reviews it. Access follows the engagement rather than the office, so staff on unrelated files do not browse yours to see how something was handled. When a second opinion is needed on a treaty point, the question is usually put in the abstract, as a mechanism rather than as your name and your figures. If you want to know who has handled your file, ask, and you will be given the names. A practice that cannot answer that question about its own work is telling you something.
Only where the work requires it. A file that involves returns in two countries is worked on by people in both, and those people see what they need in order to prepare and review the filings they are answerable for. A file that concerns one country does not travel. Where information does cross, it moves inside the same secure system rather than as an attachment. If you would prefer the work be confined to one office and that is possible for your file, say so before the engagement letter is signed and the scope will be written that way.
It is kept, not deleted the moment you leave. A tax authority can reopen a year long after it was filed, and the working papers are what answers the questions when it does, including for a former client who rings because a letter has arrived. You can ask for a copy of your records at any time, and you can ask what is held. Nothing is sold and nothing is used to market anything to you. Once retention is no longer required for the years involved, the material is destroyed rather than archived indefinitely.
No. Representation is set up through the authorisation process the tax authority itself operates, which gives a named representative access under their own credentials and leaves a record of who did what. Handing over your personal login does the opposite: every action then looks like yours, and the access survives the end of the engagement unless you remember to change the password. If a former adviser still holds your credentials, change them and put a proper authorisation in place. That also lets you withdraw our access yourself, without having to ask us.
Frequently yes, and the two filings do different jobs. The country where the income arises taxes it at source; the country where you are resident taxes your worldwide income and then gives credit for the tax already paid. Filing only one side is what leaves relief unclaimed — the credit has to be asked for on a return. We prepare both sides so the numbers agree. See dual filing.
A taxable presence in another country under the treaty — typically a fixed place of business such as an office, branch, factory or workshop, or a dependent agent habitually concluding contracts on your behalf. Some treaties add a services test measured in days. Purely preparatory or auxiliary activity is excluded, but that carve-out is narrower than it sounds: one senior employee working from home in the other country, with authority, has been enough. See business profits and permanent establishment.
Where our partners studied — CPA Canada (In-Depth Tax Program), AICPA, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.
