Keeping money overseas, making money overseas, and having overseas investors all adds a level of complexity to your business. If you need to pay expenses, employees, or taxes due in foreign currency, you likely need to have foreign accounts. If you do business overseas, you likely need to pay foreign taxes and file FBAR related forms. If your US based business has a foreign owner, you might have specialized tax reporting requirements. In a globalized world, issues of foreign accounts and taxes are less obscure and more part of general business.
The greater Miami area is America’s most international city. A majority of Miami’s residents are foreign born, and businesses routinely have overseas foreign investments and foreign investors, which has its own compliance complexity.
Most small CPA firms are ill equipped to deal with foreign tax issues, leaving this market segment at the mercy of the large national firms with in house counsel. As a boutique South Florida CPA firm, we focus on the businesses that dominate the greater Miami economy, which includes international deals often involving business investment and real estate matters.
By insuring compliance, you can avoid the onerous penalties, which are excessively large for international financial issues. The rules governing foreign bank accounts seem focused on international criminal enterprises, ignoring the fact that they capture well meaning business owners that fail to file a timely FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts) filing, or form TD F 90-22.1.
The areas around international taxation and compliance are fascinating, but the rules are complicated and challenging. Sometimes the only governing document is the actual tax treaty, with the need for your CPA Firm to create a compliance plan inside the IRS framework based upon those treaty terms. The 21st Century is a globalized one, but the holdovers of the 20th Century tax code create challenges for the modern international focused business.
