Marina Hernandez
Hello, I’m Marina Hernandez, The Crossborder Planner.
After spending the first 24 years of my life quietly living in the same little neighborhood in my native Argentina, I came to the USA for just 4 months to study finance. Well, that was the plan. In very predictable fashion, the unpredictable happened. I met a cute American and, surprise!, plans changed. My tiny world got a little bigger, my travels a little longer, and life a little messier. Fast forward 24 years, the cute American is still around and I’m still in the USA, having spent some years in between in Buenos Aires, followed by London, Miami and eventually Philly, where you can find me today. Along the way we had three children, and I switched from a career in corporate finance to one in international tax and later personal finance, where I find enormous pleasure in helping fellow international transplants live a meaningful global life.
What no one told me when I embarked in my (supposedly) short study abroad experience, is that life as an expat can be exciting, but it can also be complicated, and it’s not easy to find help navigating the complexities. This is true particularly for anyone who is an American, which I proudly became in 2012, as a result of the uniqueness of US citizenship based taxation.
When I became an expat, I was young, and as it tends to be with a lot of young people, I didn’t have a lot of money. But I had a ton of issues to solve and a lot of questions, and I needed advice. Lots of advice. Unfortunately, competent advice was hard to come by, and when I managed to find it, the cost felt financially out of reach. Out of a feeling of necessity, I ended up teaching myself a lot of expat tax stuff. Eventually, I went back to school and obtained my EA and CFP® credentials, I opened an international tax firm, MHTax, which I continue to operate to this day. This year I´ve launched Swiss American Wealth Advisors TM where I provided tax, financial, and wealth advisory services for Swiss Americans.
For the longest time, I have been wanting to share my knowledge with other expats who, like me back when I was 24, find themselves with a lot of tax planning questions and nowhere to turn to. The COVID-19 pandemic provided the sense of urgency I needed to finally make this project a top priority and take it off the ground. With government measures and relief programs adopted daily, and lots of families needing more help than ever, the time to do it is now.
Beyond the immediate need to provide information about stimulus relief measures, the purpose of this site is to share lessons learned and knowledge gained through 24 years of making mistakes as a US immigrant and expat, studying the US tax code and the many US tax treaties, and working in a tax professional capacity with hundreds of expat families.
I hope you find the content of this site educational, helpful and reliable. Your feedback helps us improve the content and provide relevant guidance to many expat families, so please don’t be shy and reach out to us.
I look forward to hearing from you and interacting with you.
Un abrazo y buena onda,
Marina Hernandez, the Crossborder Planner