Most UK based individuals who do not feel confident handling their own tax returns will want to check that any proposed tax adviser is qualified with at least one professional accounting or tax professional body in the UK as well as in the United States so that they know that the adviser is adequately regulated in the UK and handles every day many of the complexities of the foreign aspects of the United States tax system. Indeed, more broadly, for most UK based individuals there are often considerable advantages in having a UK based adviser who can jointly advise on both US and UK tax issues and (possibly) handle both sets of tax returns in the UK.
These include:
1. The client and the adviser being located in the same time zone.
2. Client documents and workpapers being held outside of the United States; which many people perceive as providing additional protection in the event of IRS audits.
3. Advisers outside of the UK are unable to offer the protections to clients provided by the UKs Proceeds of Crime Act, which requires all tax professionals in the UK to be regulated and supervised for anti-money laundering protection purposes. Here in the UK it is a criminal offence to offer tax advice unless the adviser is supervised. Quite unlike within the UK, there is no requirement for mandatory regulation of tax advisers in most of the United States.
4. The fact that although there are roughly one million paid tax professionals within the United States, that there are naturally only very few amongst these who understand enough about the US reporting of foreign based taxpayers.
5. Most tax advisers outside of the UK are not bound by the UK ethical standards that govern UK qualified advisers; which set out fundamental principles of integrity, objectivity, competence and care, confidentiality and behaviour (
http://www.tax.org.uk/professional-standards/professional-rules/professional-conduct-relation-taxation).
6. The opportunity in the unlikely event that things ever go wrong to get issues addressed through a supervisory body that is closer to the client than an adviser located several thousand miles away.
The IRS have an excellent Directory that lists all US qualified tax professionals here in the UK:
http://irs.treasury.gov/rpo/rpo.jsf
