What makes amazon fba sellers different from an ordinary filing?
Fulfilment inventory stored in another country is physical presence, which can create both an indirect-tax registration obligation and a permanent-establishment question for the seller's own company. 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.
When does the clock start if Amazon moves my stock to a new country?
At the point the goods arrive, not at the point you notice. Because storing inventory in a country is treated as being present there, the obligations attach from the arrival of the stock, and the marketplace can make that decision without asking you. In practice this makes the inventory placement report a calendar document rather than a logistics one. We ask sellers to check it on a regular cycle and tell us when a new country appears, because a registration that starts from the right date is a much smaller piece of work than one corrected afterwards.
What order should I do my filings in across different countries?
Work from what each return depends on. The indirect tax positions in each warehouse country come first, because they fix the sales figures everything else is built on. The company's own profit filing comes next. Claims for relief against tax paid abroad come last, since they need the foreign filings to evidence them. Sellers who start with the home return usually end up amending it, because the foreign numbers arrive afterwards and change it. Dependency order costs less and produces one clean set of filings instead of a filing and a correction.
How far ahead do you need my reports before a deadline?
Earlier than most sellers expect, because the first job is not preparation but reconciliation. Settlement reports have to be broken down, matched to the bank deposits and split between sales the marketplace collected on and sales it did not. Only then is there a figure to file. If a new warehouse country turns up in the inventory history, that is a registration question with its own timetable and it cannot be dealt with in the last week. Send what you have as soon as the period closes and the preparation has room in it.
Do I have to file in a country where I made no sales this period?
Often yes. A registration usually carries a filing obligation for every period it covers, whether or not anything was sold, and a nil return is still a return. Sellers who stop selling into a country but leave stock there, or leave the registration open, tend to accumulate missed periods quietly. If you have genuinely finished with a country, the registration should be closed deliberately and the closure documented rather than simply abandoned. That is usually a short piece of work, and it prevents a long one later.
I have missed several filing periods already, what should I do first?
Establish the facts before contacting anyone. Which countries, which periods, what was sold in each, and whether the marketplace had already collected on any of it. That reconstruction comes from the inventory and settlement history, and it decides everything that follows, including whether a voluntary approach to the authority is open to you and what it would need to contain. Approaching an authority with an incomplete picture is the common mistake, because it fixes a version of the facts you may then have to correct. Get the history straight, then approach.
Can you keep track of my deadlines or do I have to?
We hold the calendar for the registrations we handle and tell you what is due and what we need to prepare it. What we cannot see is your inventory moving. The marketplace reports that to you and not to us, so the one thing that stays on your side is telling us when stock appears somewhere new. Everything else, including period ends, preparation lead times and the order the filings go in, sits in the engagement and is agreed in writing at the start along with the fee.
How do families with assets in two countries handle inheritance?
With paperwork built for both systems rather than one. In practice that means wills that work where each asset actually sits, an executor with authority a foreign bank or land registry will accept, clearance certificates before the estate distributes so the executor is not left personally exposed, and an estate tax exposure calculation done while the person is alive and can still act on it. Doing it afterwards costs more and forecloses most of the options. See cross-border wills and trusts.
Branch or subsidiary — which should we use to expand?
A branch keeps one taxpayer: results consolidate at home, losses are usable sooner, and the exposure is that the branch is a permanent establishment whose profit the host country taxes, sometimes with a branch tax on repatriation. A subsidiary is a separate taxpayer with limited liability and local rates, at the cost of withholding on dividends home and transfer pricing on everything between them. The deciding facts are usually expected losses, liability and exit plans. See branch against subsidiary.
