How do I let my accountant see my tax account?
By authorising them with the tax authority itself, in whatever form that authority requires, and separately for each authority involved. The authorisation is given by you to the authority, not to the adviser, which is why signing an engagement letter does not create it. Once it is in place the adviser can see what the authority holds: assessments, notices, slips filed by third parties, instalment and balance records. That view is the reason the authorisation is worth doing early. Most discrepancies in a cross-border file are found by comparing what the authority already holds against what the taxpayer believes was reported.
Does authorising a new accountant remove my old one?
Not automatically, and it is worth checking. Authorisations sit on your account until they are cancelled or expire, so a predecessor can still hold access, and in some cases still be receiving copies of notices, long after the working relationship ended. Two consequences follow. Correspondence you never see may be going somewhere you no longer look, and a person you have not spoken to for years may still be able to read your record. When authorisation is set up for a new adviser, the sensible step is to read the list of who else is on the account and cancel what should no longer be there.
Can my accountant get slips I never received?
Often, yes, and that is one of the more useful things representative access does. Payers file copies of the slips they issue with the authority, so the authority's record can contain income entries the taxpayer never saw — a slip posted to an old address, one issued by a payer whose name he does not recognise, or one from an account he had forgotten. Reading that record before filing turns a possible reassessment into a question answered in advance. It is not a complete picture: income with no reporting slip behind it, which on cross-border files is a great deal of income, does not appear there at all.
Do I need to authorise my accountant in both countries?
If filings are being handled in both, yes, separately. An authorisation is specific to the authority it is given to, and nothing about being authorised with one country's authority carries across a border. The forms differ, the identity evidence differs, and the time each takes to come into effect differs, which is why they are worth starting before they are needed. Where one country's return depends on the other's assessment, access to both records is what lets you confirm that the figure being relied on is the one the other authority actually assessed, rather than the one on a draft return.
Can someone living abroad be authorised on a tax account?
Generally yes, though the practical obstacle is identity evidence rather than the authorisation itself. An authority verifying who is granting access has procedures built around documents and addresses it recognises, and a taxpayer whose address and identity papers were issued elsewhere can take several attempts to get through them. The work lies in assembling evidence the authority will accept, and in expecting the process to take time. It is a common reason a file stalls before any tax question is reached, and a reason to begin the authorisation at the start of an engagement rather than when a notice needs answering.
Does representative access cover all of my tax accounts?
Not necessarily. A taxpayer can hold more than one kind of account with the same authority — a personal income tax account, a business account, payroll, sales tax — and an authorisation may cover one and not the others. A company discovering that its adviser can see the corporate account but not the payroll one usually discovers it when a payroll notice needs answering. When authorisation is arranged, list the accounts that exist, check each one is covered, and treat any account nobody has access to as a place where correspondence can accumulate unseen.
How many days can I spend in a country before I become tax resident?
It depends on the country, and a day count is only ever the start. Many use a threshold in a tax year, some also look at averages across several years, and some have no day test at all and decide on where your home and life are. Two countries can both conclude you are resident, which is what the treaty tie-breaker exists to settle. Counting days without checking the tie-breaker is how people end up filing as resident nowhere. See the residency tie-breaker.
How would a foreign tax authority know I am resident there?
Mostly from information you or your bank already provided. Account-opening forms ask you to self-certify tax residence, and that certification is reported between authorities under the Common Reporting Standard or, for US accounts, under the FATCA framework. Beyond that: employer and payroll filings, property registries, immigration records and the tax filings of anyone who paid you. The realistic planning assumption is that the data arrives. See FATCA and information reporting.
