accountants for overseas business?

[Kevin Littlejohn]

Asking here in the hopes some of you will have been through some of
this already and have some useful advice...

We're about to open a European office, of sorts - I have two workers
looking to move over there, and we're piggybacking off that to expand
our market a little. They'll be making frequent trips back here, but
I'm finding that this move is the straw that breaks the camel's back
for our current accountant - while he's been good for basic business
stuff so far, we're increasingly requiring help outside his area of
knowledge.

Does anyone have either any pointers on tricks and traps for paying
overseas workers, and/or a recommendation for a good business
accountant in Melbourne that can handle this sort of advice?

KevinL

[Elias Bizannes]

If you are looking for a regular suburban accountant who can help you
with this, you will be hard pressed. This is an example where you can
tell the the difference between the big four accounting firms; the mid
tiers; and the regular accountants in the world.

You have your regular accountant, and he specialises in something like
personal income tax. But then you come to realise when running a
business, that accounting actually is more than just that and ask your
accountant to do a bit more. He physically can't - it's too big a
field to be an all round accountant (which is what the CA and CPA
brands try to imply as having members who are all rounders, but having
gone through CA, they basically told us you will never know everything
and instead exams were about how quickly you could find the relevant
information to apply it and less so what you knew).

That's when you need to recognise you need a mid-tier. More expensive,
but a huge step up, because these mid-tiers have sister firms in other
countries that they call up + they have a lot more people with
different specialties.

Of course, there gets to a stage when the mid-tiers don't cut it - and
it's why companies are literally forced to only deal with the big four
firms. The mid-tiers vary, but on the whole, there's a big gap between
them and the big four - you might need to do a bit of shopping to get
the right mid-tier, but if you go with any of the big four, you will
sweet (but broke!). The differences between the big four are more
around the service delivery than their capability.


I'm happy to give you pointers, but your questions are a little broad
so not sure what you need. Depends on country and how long you expect
your employees to be spending overseas as number of days per year.
Will need some specific details to answer your question, as it has
several implications (your employees individual tax status; your
overseas compliance requirements; whether it's a branch or a
subsidiary etc).


On Jan 4, 9:45 am, Kevin Littlejohn <kevin.littlej...@gmail.com>
wrote: