Guides

Straight answers, written by the people who’d file it.

1,407 plain-English guides on cross-border moves, US and Canadian returns, and small-business money. Each one ends in what to do next, and says when a written Position Check is the smarter first step.

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CROSS-BORDER A Canadian Corporation With a U.S. Shareholder

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1,407 guides

Small Business Tax

What Cross-Border Bookkeeping Costs for a Canadian With US Income: Two Currencies, Two Sets of Books, and the Reconciliation Between Them

September 21, 2026

A Canadian with US business income — a consultant with US clients, an owner of a US LLC, a landlord with a Florida rental — needs books that serve two tax systems: Canadian-dollar records for the T1 and T2 with the foreign tax credit computed, and US-dollar records for the 1040-NR, 1120, or Schedule E. The bookkeeping costs more than a single-country business of the same size, for reasons that are structural. Here is what drives the monthly fee, the tiers, and how to keep it down.

Small Business Tax

What FBAR Filing Costs — With a Preparer, Alone, and Late — and What Skipping It Costs

September 21, 2026

The FBAR is free to file yourself and inexpensive to add to a prepared return; it becomes costly only when it is late, when it is one of many, or when the accounts behind it need reconstruction. The penalty for not filing dwarfs every version of the fee. Here is what the form costs in each situation, what drives the preparer's charge, and how the catch-up and penalty math works.

Small Business Tax

What It Costs to Have an LLC's Tax Return Prepared Depends Almost Entirely on How the LLC Is Taxed

September 21, 2026

An LLC has no tax return of its own — it files as a sole proprietorship, a partnership, an S corporation, or a C corporation, and the preparation cost tracks that choice more than the size of the business. A single-member LLC on Schedule C costs a fraction of the same business filing Form 1120-S with payroll. Here is what each classification costs to prepare, why, and how the classification decision should account for it.

Small Business Tax

What Payroll Costs a Small Business — Software, a Service, or Your Accountant — and the Per-Employee Math

September 21, 2026

Payroll is priced as a monthly base fee plus a per-employee charge, and the market has three shapes: self-service software, a full-service provider, or your accountant running it inside a bookkeeping package. For a ten-person business the software alone is a modest annual line; the service or the accountant costs more and removes the filings, deposits, and penalty risk from your desk. Here is the pricing model, the tiers, and what the cheap option leaves you doing.

Small Business Tax

What Renouncing US Citizenship Costs on the Tax Side: The Final Return, Form 8854, and the Catch-Up That Often Comes First

September 21, 2026

Renunciation has two bills: the State Department's consular fee, and the tax work — a final dual-status return, Form 8854 with its five-year certification and balance sheet, an exit-tax computation for anyone near the covered-expatriate lines, and, for most people who reach this point, the catch-up filings that make the certification possible. Here is what each component costs, why the catch-up dominates, and how the total is built.

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