The adviser who would review your file — what they are qualified in, the memberships you can check, and how to reach them today.
Rule 5 of how we publish: every statutory page on this site carries a reviewer's name and the date it was reviewed, linked to that person's page.
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.
Rule 5 of how we publish: every statutory page on this site carries a reviewer's name and the date it was reviewed, linked to that person's page. This is that page. Tax content is judged on who wrote it, and it should be.
Start with the mechanism, not the form. An ordinary preparer will get the general position right and miss the specific one, because the specific one is not on the form. It has to be known about, claimed, and supported.
I want to know who signs off on the advice I am relying on.
I need someone who has actually filed in both of my countries, not read about it.
I want the person reviewing my file to be reachable.
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 US citizen living in India.
Worked through with figures, the mechanism looks like this.
Take C$168,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 28% on it and the home country would charge 34% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$168,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 28%) | C$47,040 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 34%) | C$57,120 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$47,040 |
| Home tax still payable | C$10,080 |
The credit absorbs C$47,040 and leaves C$10,080 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.
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.
The same point, with figures rather than adjectives.
Take C$161,000 of income taxed in both countries. Assume the other country charged 30% on it and the home country would charge 36% on the same amount.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income taxed in both countries | C$161,000 |
| Tax paid abroad (assumed 30%) | C$48,300 |
| Home tax on the same income (assumed 36%) | C$57,960 |
| Credit available (lesser of the two) | C$48,300 |
| Home tax still payable | C$9,660 |
The credit absorbs C$48,300 and leaves C$9,660 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.
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.
Whatever you have is enough to start the conversation, including nothing but the dates.
Reviewed 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.
The search that brings most people to this page is international tax advisory. It is answered here for vinayak Indolia: what creates the obligation, which filings discharge it, and the fee agreed before the work starts.
The group had statutory accounts prepared once a year and nothing in between, so financing conversations were held against a bank balance. We set a close timetable, defined what had to be accrued, and produced a management pack showing the operating result before tax adjustments with the tax position stated separately. The engagement produced a repeatable close that the internal bookkeeper now runs, a pack the directors use for decisions during the year, and a year-end preparation that starts from reconciled figures rather than from a rebuild.
A parent had been recharging management time to its overseas subsidiary for years. The charge appeared as income in one company and had never been recognised as an expense in the other, so the group accounts did not agree and neither filing could be supported if it were questioned. We reconstructed what services had actually been provided, wrote an agreement describing them, and set a basis for the charge going forward. The engagement produced a signed intercompany agreement, corrected balances on both sides, and a posting routine that keeps the two ledgers in step.
The subsidiary had grown into an audit requirement in its own country and had never been examined. We worked through the areas an auditor reaches first, which were revenue recognition, related-party balances and the basis of currency translation, and put the supporting papers in place before fieldwork rather than during it. The engagement produced a documented accounting policy for the entity, a related-party schedule agreed with the parent, and an audit that ran to the auditor's own timetable instead of stalling on questions the finance team could not answer.
A founder had funded the overseas company from personal accounts over a long period, sometimes by transfer and sometimes by paying suppliers directly. Nothing had been documented and the balance was sitting in a suspense account. We traced each movement to its source, classified what was capital and what was a loan, and had the resulting position papered. The engagement produced a loan agreement covering the historic balance, a corrected equity position in the subsidiary's accounts, and a written rule for how future funding is recorded when it happens.
Each entity was translating the other's figures on whatever rate the bookkeeper found convenient, so the consolidated numbers never tied and the variance was being explained away as rounding. We fixed the functional currency of each company, set which rate applies to which class of item, and rebuilt the prior periods on that basis so the comparatives meant something. The engagement produced a written translation policy, restated comparatives the directors could use, and a consolidation that reconciles without a balancing entry.
The client had reached the point where hiring made sense. Rather than leave the incoming finance lead to discover how the group worked, we wrote the close procedure down, handed over the working papers behind every recurring judgement, and stayed available through the first cycles the new hire ran alone. The engagement produced a documented month-end procedure, a handover file covering the intercompany and translation positions, and a finance lead running the close unaided by the end of the transition.
A 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 runsShort visits are tracked against a treaty threshold that is measured over a moving window rather than a calendar year. Where the threshold is passed, the obligation reaches back over the whole period.
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.
A defined set of finance responsibilities carried by an adviser rather than a hire: closing the books to a timetable, producing a management pack that shows the operating result separately from tax adjustments, sitting in on the decisions that carry a tax consequence, and keeping the group's intercompany arrangements documented while they are happening rather than at year end. It is not bookkeeping and it does not replace your bookkeeper. The scope is written before work starts and the fee is agreed in writing against that scope, so you are not buying open-ended hours.
The useful question is how often the decisions arrive. A business making one financing or structuring decision a quarter does not need someone in the building; it needs a reliable close and a person who can be reached when the decision comes up. A business making those decisions weekly is past advisory and should hire. What tips smaller groups towards an adviser is cross-border complexity: the work is intermittent, but it needs someone who has actually filed in both countries, which is a harder hire than a general finance lead.
Together is the point. The failures in small cross-border groups are almost always at the join: a management charge booked in one company and never recognised in the other, funding nobody documented, a currency translated on a different basis in each set of accounts. When a separate adviser owns each entity, nobody owns the join, and it surfaces on audit. One adviser across the group means the intercompany position is built once and both filings are prepared from it. The statutory filing in each country is still done by people who file there.
The adviser named on your engagement letter, and yes. You are told before you sign who will run the file and who will review it, and that person is the one who answers when you ring. Work is delegated within a team, as it is everywhere, but the review and the answer come from the named person rather than from whoever picks up. If the named adviser changes during an engagement you are told in writing before it happens. Ring +1 (416) 619-0068 and ask for the adviser by name.
Against a written scope, at a fee agreed before work starts. The scope says what is included each month, which is usually the close, the management pack and the meeting, and it names what is not included. Work outside it is quoted separately before it is done rather than added to an invoice afterwards. That constrains us as much as you: it forces an honest scoping conversation at the start, and it means a quiet month costs what a busy month costs, which is what makes the number plannable.
Access to the accounting file as it stands, the last filed financial statements and tax returns for each entity, the intercompany agreements if any exist, and the bank feeds. If no agreements exist, say so. That is common in founder-run groups and it is one of the first things the engagement fixes. We do not ask the bookkeeper to prepare anything special for the handover. The point of looking at the file untouched is to see the close as it actually runs, rather than a tidied version of it.
Yes, through more than one channel. The treaty has an exchange-of-information article that supports both routine and on-request exchange. Separately, an intergovernmental agreement has Canadian financial institutions identify US-reportable accounts and report them to the CRA, which passes them to the IRS, with the reverse flow for Canadian residents. Most other country pairs use the Common Reporting Standard for the same purpose. See FATCA reporting.
It starts with facts rather than structures: which countries have a claim on you, what each one taxes, and where the two overlap. From there the decisions are about order and timing — which country taxes first, where relief is claimed, and whether a filing or a certificate has to be in place before money moves rather than after. Most of the value is in the sequencing, because relief claimed late is usually relief recovered slowly. See international tax planning.
Where our partners studied — CPA Canada (In-Depth Tax Program), AICPA, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.
