Case study 1
Sketching the choice before asking for a single statement
A newly married client wanted to know what documents to collect. We ran the outline comparison first, on rough figures, and it showed that only one variable moved the answer materially: the tax the spouse's country would take on their salary in the coming years. The document request that followed was short. The engagement produced the outline comparison, a targeted list of what was actually needed, and a decision reached in weeks rather than the open-ended collection exercise the client had been braced for.
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Case study 2
Setting the order of work when the filing season was already short
A client came to us with little time left before the return was due and the decision about the spouse still unmade. We separated what had to be done regardless from what depended on the choice, filed on the basis that preserved the option rather than the one that closed it, and scheduled the comparison for after the season. The engagement produced a return that did not commit the couple prematurely, a written record of why that route was chosen, and the comparison completed in a quieter month.
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Case study 3
A spouse unwilling to disclose their own finances
The non-resident spouse regarded their accounts at home as their own business and declined to list them. Rather than treat that as an obstacle, we built the position around it: the spouse stays outside the US system, so nothing about their own income is needed. The work was then confined to establishing what the client personally owned or could sign on, including one household account neither of them had thought of as joint. The engagement produced that ownership map, the client's own filings, and a note recording why the election was not available.
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Case study 4
Deciding the order when a house purchase was imminent
A couple were buying a home in the spouse's country in the same year they married. Which name went on the title and whether the spouse would be elected into the US system were tangled together, and the conveyancing would not wait. We took the ownership question first, since that was the one with a date attached, and set out the US consequences of each title arrangement under both of the positions still open. The engagement produced a recommendation on the title, made in full knowledge of the election choice still to come.
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Case study 5
Rebuilding the sequence after an election was already made
A client had signed an election on an adviser's suggestion without any comparison, and wanted to know where they now stood. We reconstructed the decision as it should have been taken, then re-examined it as a question about the future rather than the past, because the making of it could not be revisited. The engagement produced an assessment of the years now inside the US system, the reporting that follows from them, and a clear account of the narrow circumstances in which ending the election would improve matters.
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Case study 6
Working out the spouse's own country's treatment first
The whole comparison for one couple turned on how the spouse's country taxes their pension contributions and their investment income, since that determines the credit available against any US tax on the same income. We started there, with the local rules and the spouse's own assessments, before touching the US side. The engagement produced a summary of the local treatment item by item, the credit position that followed from it, and only then the comparison of electing against not electing, which those local figures largely decided.
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Case study 7
A Canadian Landlord With Property in the United States
Gross withholding on US rents takes no account of mortgage interest, tax or repairs, so a leveraged property can face tax on turnover. An election onto net basis fixes that, and it has its own timing and its own filing.
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Case study 8
Never Filed a US Return — and Only Just Found Out
Born in the United States, left as an infant, and told by a bank that the returns were owed all along. The work is sequencing: establish which years are actually open, choose the catch-up route on the facts rather than filing quietly, and claim the exclusions and credits that were never taken.
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