What does a published fee actually include?
A published fee attaches to a defined scope, so the useful question is not what the number is but where the scope ends. On this site each fee is listed against a described piece of work — a named return, a named disclosure, a set of years — and the fee for your engagement is confirmed in writing before any work starts. Anything outside that description is a separate item with its own published fee rather than an adjustment to the first. That is why the scope description is worth reading more carefully than the figure beside it: two files carrying the same fee can involve quite different work, and the description is what tells you which one you have.
Why do cross-border tax firms usually quote by the hour?
Because a cross-border file can expand, and hourly billing moves that risk onto the client. The expansion is real: a second country's return may need a figure that only exists once the first is assessed, and an account nobody mentioned changes the disclosure work. Pricing to a published scope handles the same uncertainty differently. The scope is counted in things that can be counted before starting — returns, years, accounts, entities — and each is priced. When the facts turn out larger than the description, the extra items are named and priced before that work is done rather than appearing on an invoice afterwards. The number is known in advance; the scope is the thing that has to be agreed.
What if my situation is more complicated than the published scope?
The scope is compared with your facts before anything is agreed, and that comparison is the point of the first conversation. If the facts carry an extra return, an extra year or an extra entity, those are named as separate items, each against its own published fee, and the total is confirmed in writing before work starts. What does not happen is a revision of the original figure once the work has been done. A file that genuinely changes shape mid-engagement — an authority opens a query, an account surfaces — is handled the same way: the new work is described and priced as its own item.
Is a published fee per return or per year?
Per the thing described, and the unit varies by item. Some fees attach to one return for one year. Some attach to a set of years, because filing several years of the same return together is one exercise rather than several separate ones. A disclosure priced by the number of accounts is counted in accounts. The description beside each fee says which unit it uses, and that is the part to check against your own facts: a person with the same return due in two countries for one year has two filings, not one, and someone catching up has as many as the years he missed.
Can a published fee change after I have signed?
The fee agreed in writing for the described work stands for that work. What can change is the work, and on cross-border files it sometimes does — an authority asks a question, a foreign account appears in the documents that was never in the conversation, an entity turns out to file in its own right. Each of those is treated as a new item with its own description and its own fee, agreed in writing the same way, rather than as a reason to reopen the first number. If nothing about the described work changes, neither does the figure attached to it.
Does a published fee cover replying to the tax authority?
Only if the item you agreed says so. Preparing and filing a return is one piece of work; answering a query about it months later is another, and it usually involves a different kind of effort — reconstructing what was available at the time, corresponding with an authority, sometimes with two. Correspondence of that sort is described and priced as its own item rather than folded into the filing fee, so the filing fee is not carrying a contingency for something most files never need. If a query does arrive, the work it requires is described and its fee agreed in writing before it begins.
Is double taxation legal?
Yes. Nothing prevents two countries from taxing the same income under their own domestic law — each is exercising its own jurisdiction. What treaties and credit systems do is relieve the outcome rather than prohibit the charge, and relief is generally something you must claim on a return or a form, not something applied automatically. Miss the claim and the double charge stands. Double taxation explains the mechanism.
What is double tax relief and how is it given?
Three mechanisms, and which one you get depends on your residence country's law and the treaty. Exemption leaves the foreign income out of the residence-country base. Credit taxes it and then subtracts the foreign tax, capped at the residence-country tax on that income. Deduction merely reduces taxable income by the foreign tax, and is usually the weakest. Canada and the United States lead with credit; several treaties give exemption for specific income types. See claiming the credit.
