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When engineer Bruce Leggett left Oakville, Ont., for a new managerial job in the medical technology field in Denver last year, he found no shortage of complex taxation issues related to
his cross-border move.
What he did find lacking in Denver, however, were locally qualified accountants who knew anything about Canadian tax issues.
So, earlier this year, Mr. Leggett turned to a novel source of information: an interactive forum specializing in Canadian - U.S. taxation and other financial issues on the Internet
site of Toronto-based chartered accountant Mark Serbinski.
Mr. Leggett went on-line to request Mr. Serbinski's help in understanding a "potentially expensive situation" involving capital gains arising from the sale of his Canadian investments while
a resident of the United States.
Mr. Serbinski is among the first to offer such Internet services, but he expects interactive hook-ups with clients to become more common, and figures that within several years most
organizations will have "some kind of direct involvement on the Internet."
After all, he says, the Internet has "taken a reasonably small localized firm such as ours and put it on the North American market."
Mr. Serbinski estimates the site receives about 1,200 to 1.500 hits a day, just 19 per cent of them from Canada. Most of the rest originate in the United States from commercial sites,
educational institutions, non-profit organizations and even the U.S. government. Hits have also come in from about 25 other countries around the world, he says, many of them from U.S. military personnel
abroad.
In the case of Mr. Leggett and his tax problem, Mr. Serbinski responded by briefly discussing both the Canadian and U.S. tax implications associated with disposing of assets while changing
residency, as well as mentioning the existence of foreign tax credits that would prevent double taxation. He urged Mr. Leggett to consider carefully the "consequences of filing an election or actually
disposing of certain property prior to becoming a U.S. resident."
The cost to Mr. Leggett for this advice? Nothing.
Mr. Leggett is not the only one raising tax questions at Mr. Serbinski's interactive Web site (http://www.serbinski.com). In recent months, clients of the firm and others have posted
queries and responses about a number of taxation issues, from life insurance and estate tax to RRSP taxation issues for U.S. residents.
Mr. Serbinski, a chartered accountant practicing in Canada since 1978, is also a certified public accountant licensed to practice in the United States. Besides his Toronto-based firm,
Serbinski Partners, which he runs with partner Stephen Armstrong, Mr. Serbinski also has an office in Chicago named Serbinski Weinberg, Ltd. , which he runs with partner Paul Weinberg.
The two offices have a combined staff of about 10 full time employees.
Both firms specialize in cross-border taxation, financial and immigration issues. A significant number of the firm's clients are Canadians who are either working, investing or
establishing a business in the United States, or thinking of doing so. It also has many American clients who are working, investing, or establishing a business in Canada or abroad.
Mr. Serbinski says that when the firm initially designed its Web site in the spring of 1996, there was no interactive forum. That evolved about six months later as the result of an
attempt to establish a fax-on-demand service. Instead, clients said they'd prefer some sort of Internet service.
Mr. Serbinski says clients who use the interactive Web site have reported increased satisfaction because they can either read through the technical material posted there to get a better
understanding of a specific situation, or post their own query to obtain a quick reply.
He says Mr. Leggett's initial query about double taxation on capital gains and foreign tax credits, and a subsequent inquiry about resident-alien status provide good illustrations about how
the process works.
Complicated issues were raised by the queries, to which he and other, regular contributors to the forum responded. Ultimately, Mr. Leggett arranged to fax material to Mr. Serbinski's
Toronto office so that he could have help in preparing his tax returns on a fee-paying basis.
Mr. Serbinski says the firm answers all Internet queries "as distinctly and directly as possible," providing "as much information on a free of charge basis as possible," whether the query
comes from a client or not.
He feels that users who want to employ the services of his firm will do so regardless of the amount of free information provided on the Web. In fact, he estimates that about 30 to 40
per cent of the firm's new clients now result from their initial exposure to the Internet site.
Mr. Serbinski says he sometimes gets calls from people who say "I've been lurking on your Web site for a while. I realize that some of these situations apply to me and want to discuss
some of these issues with you." He says other people who read the Web site correspondence direct telephone calls of E-mail to the firm asking for consultation, because they consider their tax matters too
personal to put on a public forum.
Mr. Serbinski says his only initial reservation about providing an on line forum was about "making a mistake and counseling people inappropriately." He considered putting a disclaimer
on the site but ultimately opted against doing so because "I didn't want to be perceived as holding back information simply because of a legal technicality."
He adds that "We try to make it very clear that information here is intended for general information purposes only. And I think that that's becoming the standard on the Internet as a
whole," he says, adding that he often accompanies his own advice with links to other Web sites where users can obtain more information.
Web site links have been established, for instance, with the law office of Joseph C. Grasmick, a U.S. business immigration specialist based in Buffalo, and a North American recruitment
agency named CNC Global Resources Inc., based in Toronto.
The site specialized in three areas: Canada-U.S. tax and financial issues, immigration matters and cross-border employment questions. The subjects are arranged by what are termed
"threads" on the Internet, which represent new topics. The site is conducted independently through a Web forum in London.
Mr. Serbinski says he checks for messages several times a day, and usually puts abut half an hour into each day to maintain the Web site and answer
questions. Maintaining the type of software required to keep on top of current trends costs the firm about $3,000 to $5,000 a year, he says.
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