In 2011, chartered accountant Stephanie Wickham moved to Australia to join KPMG in Perth. During her time there she worked with expatriates from more than 20 jurisdictions and developed an in-depth understanding of the unique tax issues that expats often face. Since then Wickham has returned to Ireland and used her experience in Australia to set up her own company, Expat Taxes, which helps individuals, and companies relocating employees, to manage their tax affairs as seamlessly as possible.
“I worked with a local accountancy practice when I came home first but I quickly noticed a gap in the market for expatriate tax queries and felt it was a promising niche,” says Wickham whose company employs a fully remote team of six people. This includes four in Ireland (different locations) and one each in Madrid and London. Wickham says the big advantage of being fully remote is that it allows the company to attract highly qualified Irish accountants (such as those with “Big Four” backgrounds) who either want to WFH all the time or like the idea of living abroad while continuing to work within the Irish tax system.
“People are more used to accountancy firms going the traditional route of bricks and mortar but we set out to be a digital practice from the get-go. We didn’t see the need to burden ourselves with unnecessary overheads like fixed office space when our clients are all over the world. They don’t care if we have an office or not. They just want to talk to someone who knows how to answer their questions,” Wickham says.
“Our online consultation process works very well and engaging with clients virtually allows us to connect with them very easily even if they are outside Ireland or in a different time-zone,” adds Wickham, who estimates start-up costs and follow on investment to date in the business at about €50,000 with support from the local enterprise office in Waterford.
Examples of Expat Taxes clients include retirees moving to Ireland, C-suite executives who are relocating, tech entrepreneurs moving abroad, returning Irish expats, digital nomads, high net-worth individuals moving to Ireland and diplomats, UN officials, pilots and vessel crews.
“We have assisted clients in over 30 countries from North and South America, Australasia, Europe and Africa with one aim, which is to simplify complex tax issues for people moving to or from Ireland,” Wickham says. “We offer an end-to-end paperless tax return service and work with partners in 10 other jurisdictions to remove the headache of filing in two countries.
“This is a specialist area within tax and as a team we have over 25 years’ experience handling expatriate tax issues. We have a heavy focus on content marketing, because that’s often how our clients find us, and run a bimonthly podcast (Taxbytes for Expats) which is ungated and offers detailed content and insights for anyone arriving in or leaving Ireland. Clients want information at their fingertips and we provide it through resources such as a long-form monthly blog, a monthly newsletter and the podcast.”
The Expat Taxes business model will travel and, having acquired domain names for the UK, Canada and Australia among others, the long-term plan is to expand into these markets. However, Wickham says it will necessarily be a painstaking process as the company will need to recruit high-calibre accountants with specific experience and expertise in local markets.
In the meantime, the company is preparing to launch remitease, an app that Wickham has designed to help a specific group of overseas employees working in Ireland (known as the “non domiciled”) with their tax liabilities here. “It’s quite a technical piece of legislation so the app aims to simplify it. We have an initial version up and running but it needs more work to get it to where I want it to be,” she says.
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