Compliance
Accounting & bookkeeping
A cross-border structure does not fail on the day it is built. It fails quietly, a year or two later, on a missed filing, a mismatched year-end or a substance requirement no one was tracking. We keep the books and the calendar so it does not.
What this covers
- Maintain bookkeeping and prepare annual financial statements under IFRS or the relevant local GAAP.
- Handle VAT/GST registration, returns and cross-border VAT questions.
- Run management accounts and reporting for owners who need to see how the business is doing between year-ends.
- File the annual returns, corporate filings and confirmation statements each jurisdiction demands, on its own calendar.
- Track economic-substance and CFC reporting obligations that sit on top of the ordinary accounts.
Scope & conditions
- Reporting standards
- IFRS or local GAAP, prepared to the standard the auditors and the registry will accept.
- Indirect tax
- VAT/GST registration and periodic returns, including the registration thresholds and the place-of-supply rules that catch cross-border digital businesses.
- Ongoing compliance
- Annual returns, corporate filings, payroll where staff are employed, and the economic-substance filings now required in many low-tax jurisdictions.
How it works
- Good bookkeeping is what makes audit, tax and banking cheap and calm. Thin books make all three expensive and fraught.
- Cross-border structures create obligations in more than one place at once. There is home-country CFC reporting, host-country accounts, and substance filings, and they have to be reconciled, not run in isolation.
- We keep a compliance calendar for each entity, so nothing lapses in a jurisdiction no one was watching.
- Substance is now audited, not assumed. A company with no bookkeeping, no accounts and no local activity is exactly where an economic-substance or CFC challenge lands.
- Mismatched financial year-ends across a group are a quiet, recurring source of tax and audit pain. Fix them at formation, not in year three.
- We'll sort the accounts later is the most expensive sentence in cross-border business.
Frequently asked
Do I need to do accounting for a company that isn't trading yet?
Usually yes. Most jurisdictions require a dormant or non-trading company to keep records and make annual filings. That might mean a confirmation statement, dormant accounts, sometimes a nil tax return. The obligations are lighter, not absent, and missing them quietly accrues penalties and can get the company struck off. Dormant is a filing status, not a holiday from compliance.
When does my company have to register for VAT?
It depends on the jurisdiction and the activity. Each has its own registration threshold, and cross-border digital services often trigger registration in the customer's country regardless of turnover. VAT is where fast-growing online businesses most often fall out of compliance, because the place-of-supply rules do not follow where the company is registered. We map the exposure before it becomes a liability.
What is economic substance and does it apply to my company?
Many low-tax and offshore jurisdictions now require companies carrying on relevant activities to demonstrate real local substance. That means people, premises and genuine decision-making, backed by an annual substance report. It sits on top of ordinary accounting. Failing it triggers penalties and information exchange. If your structure relies on a jurisdiction taxing lightly, assume substance rules apply and plan for them.
Need accounting & bookkeeping done properly?
One named person on your file, and an honest answer on scope, timeline and cost.