From the UK to the World, Building a Cross-Border Tax Ecosystem
- TBA
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
In her teens, she travelled alone to Cambridge for her studies. After working for a few years, she was headhunted by company with a high salary offer. More than a year later, she returned to London to start a business from scratch...
Over a decade later, she leads a team with offices and branches established globally, helping countless sellers easily navigate global tax and compliance challenges.
She is Sophie Lin, Founding Partner and CEO of TBA Group.
Today, TBA has grown into a leading British financial and tax enterprise and a one-stop cross-border compliance service provider.
Its business covers European and American company registration, accounting and taxation, global VAT, European EPR, and GPSR compliance.
It has established long-term strategic partnerships with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and Walmart Its service network spans over 20 countries worldwide, serving a cumulative total of more than 60,000 clients.
The starting point of a lone traveller
With over twenty years of experience in tax consulting and international business management, Sophie’s career spans multiple industries and borders. In 2009, she resigned from a high-paying position and returned to London to found TBA Group.
Starting as a one-person company, she grew the firm to a team of 60 people.
In the beginning, Sophie placed advertisements on the Chinese Business Gazette, opening up new client channels step by step.
With her Chinese background combined with her experience of growing up in the UK, Sophie possesses unique insights into the rhythm and cultural differences of the global market. This allows her to better serve those clients who plan to develop in the UK or have already started businesses locally.
TBA Global: From local taxation to global cross-border business
As a senior tax consultant and ACCA-certified accountant, the core business of TBA under Sophie's leadership was initially British local taxation. This included company registration, self-assessment registration, employee payroll calculations, corporate tax returns, and VAT calculations.
When new EU VAT regulations were implemented in 2016, a large number of Chinese Amazon sellers fell into a tax compliance predicament.
Sophie and her team keenly captured this market opportunity, conducted in-depth research on the regulations, and successfully joined the Amazon SPN platform to become its tax service provider, further expanding the business into the global cross-border e-commerce field.
Driven by the wave of globalisation, cross-border e-commerce is reshaping the international business landscape at an unprecedented speed. It not only promotes the cross-border flow of goods, services, and culture but also brings brand-new challenges to the global tax system.
Facing the rapid rise of emerging platforms like Temu and TikTok Shop, sellers need to respond flexibly within a complex and changing policy and market environment, and TBA has become a trustworthy partner.
Today, TBA has established its headquarters and a Paddington office in London, UK, and has branches in Shenzhen, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and other places in China. Its business covers the EU, USA, Japan, Australia, the UAE, Canada, Mexico, and many other countries and regions, serving over 60,000 enterprises.
The company has established long-term cooperative relationships with world-renowned e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Temu.
To meet the diverse needs of global clients, TBA provides multi-language service support in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
As market demands continue to change, TBA is expanding from a traditional accounting business to a more comprehensive tax and platform compliance services, gradually building an integrated service system for cross-border enterprises covering the globe.
Facing the uncertainty of the global economy, TBA continues to expand the scope and depth of its services, helping clients steadily lay out their international markets and achieve sustainable development.
Building a global tax service brand
Since its establishment, TBA has always used its professional strength to build a bridge for Chinese commercial operations to go global, helping global sellers achieve tax compliance and worry-free cross-border operations.
When talking about the competitive advantages of Chinese companies going global, Sophie points out that supply chain integration capabilities, technological innovation, and digital operational capabilities are key factors.
As more and more Chinese brands strike an ideal balance between price and quality, relying on a strong manufacturing system and an increasingly perfect e-commerce ecosystem, Chinese companies are already able to respond quickly to international market changes and achieve localised growth through flexible innovation models.
At the same time, the rise of generative AI is reshaping the fields of cross-border e-commerce and compliance services.
As an innovative pioneer in the industry, TBA always stands at the forefront of technological development. The team led by Sophie actively integrates AI technology into business processes, significantly improving the efficiency of content generation, data processing, and customer service, whilst strictly controlling data privacy and regulatory risks.
‘At TBA and on our subsidiary SaaS system platforms, we deeply feel the transformative power of AI. It can automatically generate compliance documents and assist clients in efficiently completing complex tax returns. The introduction of AI not only reduces corporate operating costs but also brings a smoother user experience. Of course, we also closely monitor the legal, regulatory, and data privacy challenges brought by AI to ensure that every step of corporate development meets compliance standards’.
‘Our goal is to build the world's largest cross-border e-commerce service ecosystem. It is not limited to tax services, but creates an open platform that allows more high-quality service providers to join and jointly serve both Chinese and global clients’.
Looking to the future, TBA will continue to work with partners in various fields of the cross-border ecosystem to provide one-stop solutions covering taxation, finance, and compliance, whether in the UK or across the world.
If you are looking for a trustworthy professional partner, we will help you move towards financial success with professionalism, responsibility, and innovation.
Why TB Accountants?
Professional Assurance: Our team includes ACA members and ACCA-certified professionals, delivering services to the highest industry standards.
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