Get to know the authorCincinnati Startup assisting 7 million US expats worldwide lifts anchor in NYC, scouts international sites for new HQ.
New York, NY — Though it had been in the works for some time, just this summer, the US Treasury Department unleashed a regulatory tsunami upon US citizens living and working abroad, the Foreign Asset Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Uncle Sam and President Obama haven’t exactly spelled out “FATCAT”, but they’re only one letter off. And though their initial interest was to target the 1 percent with significant quiet offshore holdings, the average American expat has, unfortunately, been caught in the cross-hairs …
“At Bright!Tax, we feel that American expatriates on the whole are American heroes,” said Greg Dewald, principal and founder of Bright!Tax (brighttax.com), a global US income tax and accounting firm exclusively serving US expatriates. “In the era of globalization, American expats represent the best of what the United States projects onto the world stage. At the very least, they deserve to be treated fairly by the US government and with an acknowledgement that reflects the contributions they make to ‘Brand USA’ and the United States’ interests at large.”
“Bright!Tax, from its inception, exists solely to assist American expats with their US tax filing obligation by providing simple, secure and reliable online tax preparation services that heretofore were simply unavailable,” Dewald said.
There are over 7 million Americans living and working overseas, most of whom are still on the hook for filing federal taxes every year, and many of them were simply unaware of their obligation to do so. Americans, uniquely, are assessed on worldwide income, and unless they have renounced US citizenship and returned their US passport, American expats must file federal taxes every year, the same as if they lived in Anytown, USA.
Up Next: The First Bright!Tax International HQ Facility
With his visionary brand of entrepreneurialism, Dewald is a lifelong innovator who previously was principal and CEO at Opera Incorporated, a nationally renowned US designer of exhibits based in Cincinnati, OH. While leading Opera, Dewald and his staff of over 50 engaged clients nationwide in a cloud-based design and production process, a unique platform that singed the potential of even more expansive global web commerce in his mind, and thus, led to Bright!Tax.
Bright!Tax is a virtual company, save for its data center in New York, which will be relocated early next year to its first international headquarters. An international site search has narrowed the company’s options to office facilities in London, Brussels, Singapore and Hong Kong.
“We anticipate making a decision sometime this fall, with the goal of announcing our first international headquarters for Bright!Tax in January of 2015,” Dewald said. All employees currently work remotely; all Bright!Tax front-office, back-office, communications and infrastructure originate in the company’s cloud-based architecture. Dewald currently lives in Argentina and Cincinnati.
The first international headquarters will house the Bright!Tax data center as well as Dewald’s HQ offices and an as-yet undetermined number of staff. Currently, Bright!Tax employs 10 CPAs working remotely from their individual office facilities across the US. Expansion plans call for 25 CPAs over the next two years, and as many as 50 over the next five years.
“This is what we’re preparing for, that is the growth path we are seeing and the future potential of Bright!Tax is very impressive,” Dewald said. “Our goal is to come to scale and win a significant share of our market within this burgeoning industry,” Dewald said. “It’s an opportunity for us to introduce excellence into this space, and to display our true passion, which is our near fanatical commitment to client happiness and satisfaction.”
