International Tax Compliance Services

Are you looking for help to prepare U.S. tax returns for

an offshore trust,
foreign corporation,
international business company,
foreign mutual fund,
foreign partnership or
other cross-border tax reporting obligation?

The various members of the International Tax Compliance Group, LLC can help you. All of us have extensive experience with international tax work and by working together we can do a better job for our clients and can also smooth out some our own work flow. If you hire one of us, you will also be authorizing that member to sub-contract some of the work to other members of the group, as needed to provide you with the best quality and most timely service.

Two members of our group are in the San Francisco area, one is in the New York metro area and one is in the Kansas City metro area.

Each member will contract with clients (or other tax preparers) directly but we will generally seek help from one or more of our colleagues to gather the information that is needed to do the work that is needed. (The ITCG is not a professional partnership -- it is a technical support and educational group.)

Members can provide a fixed fee estimate for various tax forms based on the condition that the information needed is available and organized to facilitate preparation of the required tax forms.

Gathering, organizing and analyzing the required information will be billed for by the hour if that can't be done by a local tax accountant. Examples include currency conversions, reconstructing the cost of assets, analyzing foreign investment account information and compiling information from basic accounting records such as a checking account.

We prefer to work with each client's local tax preparer as much as possible in order to help clients to minimize the cost of the accounting work that is required.

Meetings, phone consultations, reading information provided by clients and reviewing the tax laws and regulations where there are unusual facts that need to be interpreted will be billed by the hour. Emails, letters and other correspondence will also be billed on an hourly basis.

Once an agreement is reached as to the scope of the work and the estimated fees, the contracting member will require a retainer for the full amount of the estimate. If there is a change in the scope of the work, an addition to the engagement letter and additional retainer will be required.

In order to provide a fee estimate and an engagement letter, we will need the following information.

1. A brief description of your foreign investments, trusts, corporations, partnerships or other entities including where they are located and an explanation of the ownership structure.

2. An explanation of your objectives with respect to your offshore activities, what kind of help you are seeking from us and an explanation of any time constraints other than normal tax return filing deadlines.

3. A copy of the most recent available personal tax return and any business or trust related tax returns or forms.

4. A recent summary of your principal assets and debts.

Based on the information you provide, our contracting member will draft an engagement letter and an estimate of the fee. You are, of course, free to accept the proposed agreement and fee or to look elsewhere.