Sailing on the wide accountant-cy -- help me find a captain!

April 30, 2008 11:55 AM

Bean-counterFilter: How do I find an accountant? I'd ask around, but we have special needs....

Well, I never EVER thought I'd need an accountant, but then I married this British fella (we're adjusting his status) with his own company and the bank sent him some W-8BEN form and... we're confused. Substantial presence test? Wha? Permanent Alien or Non-Permanent? Huh?

We need an accountant that has experience working with recent immigrants and US tax law. My husband has an accountant back in Britain, but A. he's retiring soon and B. he doesn't know US tax law (why should he?)

I've poked around some ex-pat sites, and I've not come up with anything. But what (and where) specifically should we be looking for in an accountant? Certain society memberships? No bad marks on the BBB web site? If it helps, we live in the SF Bay Area.

Thanks!

posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Do you have an immigration lawyer? If so, they might be good to ask.
posted by rhizome at 1:09 PM on April 30, 2008

Please check your MeFi mail.
posted by mosk at 1:58 PM on April 30, 2008

Response by poster: rhizome: we've been doing all our immigration stuff ourselves (we have a pretty straightforward situation, and Visajourney.com has been a godsend). So we don't have the resource of an immigration attorney to turn to -- that's an excellent suggestion, if we only had one!

mosk: thanks!
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 2:51 PM on April 30, 2008