How confident are you in the quality of products and services that your business or organization provides? Do you think that you have the cutting edge technology, the determination, the skills, and the knowledge required to always be ahead of your competition by a safe margin? Do you enjoy what you do—is the business moving in the direction you’ve always wanted it to move in? If your answers to these three questions are affirmative, congratulations! A word of caution, though: are you ready to take it to the next stage—that is—internationally? Expanding your American business overseas or bringing your foreign business into the United States may seem like a dream come true, and we certainly hope that it would be just that, but the issue of international tax accounting is not to be left on the sideburner at any point. If your business is expanding to America or you personally are planning to make the US your new home, there is some thinking to do.
Why be concerned about international tax accounting?
Even when doing business in one location in one state, you usually have to make sense of numerous taxation levels, systems, requirements, and paperwork. Taking your business internationally, or bringing your business into the United States, multiplies any difficulties and complexities in terms of taxes tenfold. Some of the important issues at play here are whether there are certain bilateral or multilateral agreements in place between nations in question when it comes to taxes. You want to avoid double taxation for the same items and expenses, but you also want to make sure that you are not unintentionally avoiding mandatory taxes in one or both of the countries. While the situation is made much more complex on the business taxes side of things, even international tax accounting for individuals takes courage, perseverance, and research to be done correctly. Different jurisdictions have very different requirements when it comes to bookkeeping and accounting practices.
How to stay on the safe side
If you have an in-house international tax accounting expert, you are lucky. What many organizations and businesses tend to do, however, is hire an external team to handle this aspect of your business operations for you. A professional international tax accounting advisor is your safest and most reasonable choice when it comes to handling this side of things and letting you and your staff focus on the main line of your business. International taxation is a maze—unless you are working in international taxation yourself, you should not try to complete this maze without at least relying on expert opinion and suggestions.
As you may have noticed, counties, municipalities, states and the federal government like to make minute but life-threatening changes to legislation and paperwork. Hiring a professional international tax accountant will allow you to avoid these pitfalls on the global level. The last thing you want in the life of your business is having several levels of tax authorities from several nations clamouring for your attention.
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