What makes professors & lecturers different from an ordinary filing?
Many treaties contain a professors-and-teachers article that exempts remuneration for a limited period from arrival — and the period does not restart for a second appointment in the same country. An ordinary preparer applies the general rule and stops there, which is how the relief in the specific provision goes unclaimed.
Can you work with my existing accountant?
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.
How much does a cross-border return for an academic cost?
The honest answer is that it depends on your file, and we will not guess at it before reading one. What we do instead is read the documents you already have, work out what actually has to be prepared, and put the fee in writing before any work starts. That way the number reflects your appointment, your grants and the years that are open, rather than an average. Send what you have, or call +1 (416) 619-0068, and the written quote comes back before anything is begun.
Do you charge by the hour or a fixed fee?
A fixed fee, agreed in writing before work starts. An academic file is usually a known quantity once the documents have been read: the returns are identifiable, the treaty questions are identifiable, and the number of open years is countable. Pricing it as an hourly estimate transfers the uncertainty to you, and there is no reason for you to carry it. If something genuinely outside the agreed scope emerges once we are into the file, we stop, tell you what it is, and re-quote in writing before continuing.
What makes one academic’s return more expensive than another’s?
Mostly the number of moving parts rather than the amount of income. Files cost more where there are several years to bring up to date, grants from more than one funding body, a residency question that has to be settled before either return can be prepared, foreign accounts with reporting obligations of their own, or a payroll treatment that has to be corrected as well as reported. A single appointment in two countries with clean paperwork sits at the other end. Reading your documents is how we tell which you are.
Does the quote cover both countries or just one?
It covers what the quote says it covers, and we write that out rather than leaving it implied. Most academic files need returns on both sides prepared together, because the position taken in one is what the relief in the other is claimed against, and splitting them between two firms is how the two filings come to disagree. Where only one country needs a filing, the quote says so and prices that. Either way the scope is on the page before you decide.
What happens to the fee if the tax authority asks questions later?
Correspondence about a filing we prepared is a separate piece of work with its own scope, and if it is needed we quote it in writing in the same way. It is not billed against the original engagement without your agreement, and it is not assumed into the original fee either. What reduces the chance of it arising is doing the documentation properly the first time: the evidence behind a residency conclusion or a treaty claim goes on the file when the return is prepared, not when someone asks.
Do I pay before you look at my documents?
No. The sequence is that you send whatever paperwork exists, we read it, and then the fee comes back to you in writing. Only once you have accepted that figure does the work begin. That order exists because a price quoted before anyone has seen an appointment letter or a grant agreement is a guess, and a guess has to be padded. Reading first is what makes a fixed fee possible at all. Call +1 (416) 619-0068 if you would rather talk through what to send.
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.
What is cross-border tax?
Cross-border tax is what applies when income, assets or people touch more than one tax system at once — someone living in one country and earning in another, a company selling or hiring abroad, a family holding property in a second country. The work is rarely one country's rules applied harder; it is reconciling two sets of rules and claiming the relief that stops the same income being taxed twice at full rates. See what we do.
