Cross-border Tax Attorney

[MsZ 6]

Does anyone have a recommendation on a good tax attorney to deal with cross-border issues?

Major snafu on the part of my husband's company in moving his stock option account into the US. They used his Canadian SIN rather than his US and a recent sale of options has caused an avalanche on our account.

Here's what happened : He exercised stock options for a net of not a whole lot, but what it did was alert the IRS to the fact that his SIN on the account didn't match his US Social Security number. No problem. He fills out a B-Notice and all is supposed to be well. Unfortunately, it was rejected because the wrong part of the firm holding his options was trying to make the change and were not allowed. The government slapped him with a 28% capital gains tax. OK. We could probably make that up at regular tax time. HOWEVER. Here's the kicker. They didn't tax the proceeds. They taxed the value of the stock instead of his net.

So now his account has a negative cash value... What does the fun firm that controls this thing do? Just what any brokerage would do, sells more stock to cover the difference. ONLY this will result in another 28% penalty. Until that SSN thing gets fixed, we are in a death spiral. Sell. Ding. Red. Sell. Ding. Red. Oh joy!

Lots of things went wrong -- his company screwed up, the options company didn't send him to the right department, we only had 3 days to get it fixed and they didn't let him know it hadn't been taken care of and he wouldn't have known about that unless he noticed that there had been another trade exercised on his account!!!

I shouldn't be surprised about his company screwing up, either. They continued to contribute to his RRSP for several months after he had moved here. That was a LOT of fun fixing.

Let this be a lesson to anyone moving to the US who has any assets -- get a tax attorney. Don't trust anyone to do the right thing no matter how much you tell them what it is. Follow up every step of the way. Get anything that is told to you in writing. Trust no one. Americans just don't appreciate how complicated and punishing the IRS can be to immigrants.

Sorry for the rant. But thank you for listening.

Donna