Walking through non-US taxation with Brian Schwam
In this episode of the SALTovation podcast, we speak with Brian Schwam, from WTP Advisors, and our very own Judy Vorndran.
Brian walks through some nuisances on non-US taxation from the knowledge he’s gained in his over 30 years of experience with international taxation. Listen to how this type of taxation overlaps with state tax.
Questions asked and answered in this Episode:
- How did Brian come to focus on international tax?
- What brought him to WTP?
- What factors cause a foreign corporation to have a tax presence in the US?
- How are non-US businesses generating income from the states?
- What are the penalties for non-US businesses that are not paying sales tax?
- What is the outbound for a US-based business with foreign operations?
- What is the one most important thing Brian wants people to know about what he does?
What You Will Discover:
- [00:51] How Brian carved out his career in a niche area of taxation
- [05:44] What factors subject a foreign corporation to US tax
- [07:40] How non-US businesses bring in revenue from the states
- [09:26] Why foreign manufacturers have plants in America
- [15:33] How treaties play into taxation
- [20:25] What are the consequences if a business doesn’t pay its sales tax
- [27:00] What forms a US-based business with foreign operations need to complete
- [37:49] What is the one thing Brian wants people to know about what he does
- [39:16] Outro
Quotables:
- “There’s a lot of labor-related taxes in a lot of foreign countries that we don’t have here.” - Brian Schwam [13:20]
- “And this whole concept on who we have treaties and who we don’t have treaties with, right? Where we play nice in the sandbox with some other countries and we don’t play so nice with others.” - Judy Vorndran [15:30]
- “One of them is the streamlined compliance filing. If you go back and file three years and pay interest in tax, they waive the penalties. Or if you have a situation where you don’t have any reported income, but you didn’t file these forms for whatever reason, as long as it wasn’t willful, then you can go back six years and all the penalties will be waived forever. If you don’t do anything, which is always one of the options, the statues never run, the penalties never go away and they just keep adding up. As soon as you're compliant once, it kind of alerts the IRS that you should have been compliant all along, so that’s why these programs are important. We like to have our clients use them to get clean, if you will.” - Brian Schwam [33:03]
- “We’re also in the business of helping people optimize and maximize their opportunities, and I think if a business isn’t getting the proper advice, it’s like walking through a minefield. We try to help people avoid the landmines.” - Brian Schwam [38:41]
Relevant Links:
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