# Canadian living in US - Tax accountants?



## mikesk (Feb 17, 2017)

Hi there... I recently moved from Canada to Arizona. I understand this complicates my tax situation substantially. Unfortunately everywhere I look seems to want $1500.00-$2000.00 to do my taxes. This seems extremely excessive to me. Has anyone found any reasonably priced accountants that deal with US and Canadian returns?

Thanks!


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## lmu313 (Feb 10, 2017)

*expatcpa*

I've been very happy with Joseph Schmidt of Expat CPA. He has been fair, efficient, and reliable. His prices seems reasonable. 

Joseph Schmitz<snip>


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

There are a number of online tax preparation services for expats, though I have no idea of their prices, nor their reliability. You may want to try H&R Block, as I understand they have offices in Canada for doing Canadian taxes and might be able to arrange a combined fee for the joint use of both US and Canadian services.

You can also look into the option of using tax preparation software for your US returns (and possibly also for your Canadian ones). Considerably less expensive than finding a tax preparer.
Cheers,
Bev


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## twostep (Apr 3, 2008)

Unless your situation is squirrelly you should not need a tax accountant. We moved from HR Block to software when it first became available.


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## thepaleguy1 (Feb 14, 2017)

If you have:

- accounts / financial interest in Canada,
- brokerage accounts / mutual funds / securities in Canada,
- total of more than $10k in all accounts in Canada,

I would highly recommend you to go to expat oriented tax accountant or CPA. 

If H&R block - they have expat online filing I think. Don't go to Joe Doe as those guys will not know about stuff like FBAR, FATCA, 8398, International Income, etc and you want to do it right.


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## mikesk (Feb 17, 2017)

Wow. I got quoted $2500 when I went in to the office. $2500 for doing taxes!!! WTF!!!! Sorry, but I'm not made of money. Has anyone actually forked out this much for taxes before? There is absolutely no way I'm paying that much for taxes. @lmu313 - What did Joseph Schmitz charge you?


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Going the "good faith" route with one of the main software packages will cost you max $100. 
Cheers,
Bev


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## thepaleguy1 (Feb 14, 2017)

What is the "good faith" route?


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

The good faith route is using the commercial preparation software in good faith (i.e. answering the interview questions to the best of your ability) and going with what the software does for you.
Cheers,
Bev


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## twostep (Apr 3, 2008)

mikesk said:


> Wow. I got quoted $2500 when I went in to the office. $2500 for doing taxes!!! WTF!!!! Sorry, but I'm not made of money. Has anyone actually forked out this much for taxes before? There is absolutely no way I'm paying that much for taxes. @lmu313 - What did Joseph Schmitz charge you?


That may not be far off depending on your needs. Give or take 250/hour. Shoebox filing, international, itemized versus Quickbooks on a stick.


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## mikesk (Feb 17, 2017)

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a cost associated with it, but $2500 seems way out of left field. Assuming $250/hour (which still seems high) - you're saying it's going to take 10 hours to do my taxes? What about it takes 10 hours to do? If someone does this for a living they are going to have software to help out. So it's not 10 hours of paper work. Even back in the day when I did my taxes manually with pen and paper it didn't take me more than a couple of hours. Something isn't making sense here.


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

If you don't like the $2500 estimate, find someone else. (But quickly, tax preparers are just getting into their busiest season right now and may be full booked.) If you're asking them to do both US and Canadian taxes, that will definitely run your bill up, as a double qualification like that is rare in practice and it's likely anyone reputable will farm out the "other" tax work to someone in country (i.e. the Canadian tax forms to Canada). 

If your tax situation isn't particularly complicated, it could be well worth the investment in time and effort for you to download (or get a printed copy of) Publication 17, which is the basis for many of the "Do your own taxes" books on the market for $25 or more. The first year, you'll need to invest a bit of effort to get the hang of US taxes, but the following years gets much quicker and easier, since you'll just be following the pattern.

Or, go the software route. Again, there is a learning curve the first year or so. It gets easier every year thereafter.
Cheers,
Bev


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## A. Fig Lee (Feb 26, 2017)

It is easy enough to do taxes by yourself. IRS have good instructions. Couple of weekends at most and you are done. Biggest obstacle we had was to file W-7 to get ITIN for my wife.
It was tricky. Otherwise starightforward


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