Who is NorthArc?

Who is NorthArc, in one paragraph?

NorthArc is a specialist UK tax, structuring and advisory firm that helps founder-led technology, AI and media companies navigate US investment, expansion and restructuring before important decisions become difficult or expensive to reverse. The firm gives advice at the points where the biggest decisions get made: taking on a US investor, setting up US operations, restructuring the group, relocating a founder, and getting ready for investment, a sale, or the checking process that comes before either. Running through all of it is one job, protecting the UK tax reliefs a company has built up (government schemes such as SEIS, EIS, EMI and R&D tax relief that lower the tax bill for the company, its investors or its staff) while making the US move work, so that a wrong choice today does not turn into a large and avoidable bill later.

Put simply: get the structure right, at the right time, and in the right order. The sections below answer the questions founders ask most often about who NorthArc is, who it is for, what it does, and how it works.

Industry insight

The US is the deepest pool of capital in the world, and the pull towards it is real. In 2025 US companies raised close to 64% of all the venture capital invested worldwide, and US venture funds are several times larger than their European counterparts. That pull reaches companies at every stage, from a first US cheque to a private-equity-backed platform, and it often creates pressure to restructure sooner than the facts justify. Moving too early, or in the wrong order, is where the avoidable costs and the lost UK tax reliefs usually show up.

What does NorthArc actually do?

NorthArc advises on the big decisions that come up when a company raises money or expands into another country, and it focuses on the move from the UK to the US in particular. The work is advice and analysis rather than day-to-day bookkeeping or filing, and it centres on the moments where a wrong move is expensive or hard to undo.

In practice, that means work such as:

• Getting ready for US investment. How to take money from US angels, venture funds or later-stage investors cleanly, what those investors and their accountants will expect to see, and what it does to the company's UK tax position.
• Structuring a US expansion. Whether and when the company needs a US entity at all, and the difference between opening a US subsidiary (a US company owned by the UK one) and doing a Delaware flip (putting a new US company on top, so the UK company becomes its subsidiary), and how to sequence either one so choices stay open.
• Protecting UK tax reliefs. Keeping SEIS, EIS, EMI, R&D and BADR intact through funding rounds and restructures, instead of finding out too late that one step has broken one of them.
• Preparing for a raise or a sale. Making sure the share ownership record (the cap table), the reliefs and the overall structure hold up when investors, HMRC or overseas tax authorities examine them closely.
• Cross-border accounting. The ongoing accounting that sits underneath all of the above once a company has UK and US operations, so the numbers in each country line up.

NorthArc combines technical tax knowledge with commercial judgement. Every recommendation is built around one aim: a structure that supports growth, holds up when investors examine it, and stays sound under scrutiny from the tax authorities.

Who is NorthArc for?

NorthArc works with UK technology, AI and media companies making a US-linked decision, and with the investors and advisers around them. It is most useful when a company is facing a specific, high-stakes decision about how it is set up, rather than when it just needs routine filings done. The firm groups the people it helps into three:

• Founders and management teams at UK technology, AI and media companies preparing to raise US capital, set up US operations, hire internationally, or go through a US-linked transaction.
• Venture capital and private equity firms that want specialist UK-US support for a portfolio company approaching a structural decision, an international expansion, or a cross-border transaction.
• Professional advisers, the accountants, lawyers and corporate finance advisers whose clients need joined-up UK-US structural advice they do not provide in-house.

The work runs across a wide span of company maturity, from an early company taking its first US cheque, through Series A to C scale-ups, to private-equity-backed platforms, and the question changes as a company grows. If a company is not yet facing one of these decisions, NorthArc will usually say so plainly. The firm earns its keep on the decisions that matter, not by inventing work that does not need doing.

What are the seven stages of a UK-to-US move?

NorthArc sorts every company into one of seven stages, because the right advice depends entirely on where a company already is. A risk that is urgent at one stage is premature at another, and naming the stage is what stops a founder acting on a problem they do not yet have (or ignoring one they do). The stages run from having barely thought about the US to having already restructured:

• Pre-Catalyst. The company is thinking about the US, but nothing has forced the question yet: no US revenue, no US hires planned, no investor pressure, no founder relocation. The work here is framing the questions clearly before any single pressure starts driving decisions.
• Customer-Led. US customers start making structural requests: to contract through a US entity, bill in dollars, hold data in the US, or provide US tax forms. The customer is asking, and the company is at the question rather than the answer.
• Hiring. The first US hire, or the decision about how to make it, becomes the lead signal, usually the choice between an Employer of Record and the company's own US entity.
• Investor-Pulled. A US investor has named conditions, most commonly a Delaware flip, often with a term sheet on the table. The company is being pulled by capital rather than by customers or hiring.
• Crossing. A founder is relocating to the US, or already has. US presence becomes a personal reality before it becomes a corporate one, bringing founder residency questions to the front.
• Multi-Catalyst. Three or more pressures stack at once, for example customer, hiring and investor pressure together, with no single one clearly in the lead.
• Post-Restructure. The company has already taken a US structural step. The live questions are what follows the move: transfer pricing, IP location, intercompany agreements, and whether the structure can be defended later.

The single most common mistake is acting on the stage a founder thinks they are at, rather than the one they are actually at. Exposure often starts earlier than people realise, and pressure to restructure often arrives before the facts justify it.

Is NorthArc a US tax firm?

No. NorthArc is a UK firm that specialises in the UK side of a UK-to-US move, and it does not give US legal or US tax advice. That is a deliberate line, not a gap. US federal, state and local tax questions are set out clearly so that a US adviser hired by the client can confirm them, and NorthArc co-ordinates that work so the plan stays joined up on both sides of the Atlantic.

This matters because of the usual way cross-border decisions go wrong. A cross-border move is normally split between several providers: a UK accountant considers the UK tax position, a US lawyer sets up the entity, a payroll provider or Employer of Record handles the employee, an investor states a preference. Each can answer its own part correctly without anyone owning the overall structure, or the order in which it is built. That gap is where the damage happens: a Delaware flip that made sense on the US numbers alone can quietly strand a UK loss pool, put EIS relief at risk, or lose EMI protection for the team's share options.

NorthArc works across that boundary. It does not replace your accountant or your lawyer; it sits above them as the decision layer, taking responsibility for the whole structure and the sequence, and bringing in specialist UK and US providers to implement the individual parts once the direction is set.

How does the Crossing Method work?

NorthArc works through a named, step-by-step approach called the Crossing Method, and its central idea is that the order of decisions matters as much as the decisions themselves. Rather than jumping to an answer ("flip to Delaware"), it works through the problem in a fixed sequence, and each step produces something a founder can actually use.

The method is deliberately front-loaded. The first two steps, naming the trigger and scoring the exposure, come before any talk of routes, because the most expensive errors come from choosing a route before anyone has checked what the company has already committed to. A founder can enter at the top and go the whole way through, or use a single stage to answer a single question.

What does working with NorthArc involve?

NorthArc is led by a senior chartered adviser, which means the person who first looks at your problem is the same person who does the analysis, rather than the work being passed down to a junior. The firm prefers to produce clear written documents a founder can act on and share with investors, rather than sign clients up to open-ended monthly retainers.

The usual path runs from a free assessment through to implementation:

The Structure Review is the firm's core paid piece of work. It is a fixed fee scoped to the decision in front of you (published as "From £5,000"), and it is written to be the document you rely on for your own decision and hand over when investors examine the business, the checking process investors and buyers run before they commit, known as due diligence.

Why does the order of decisions matter so much?

Because several of the decisions in a US move are hard or impossible to reverse, and some of them silently cancel each other out if taken in the wrong order. This is the single idea that sits underneath everything NorthArc does, so it is worth spelling out with real examples:

• EMI share options must be granted before a restructure, not after. Options granted while the company is independent can carry their tax-advantaged treatment through a later reorganisation. Options merely promised, but not yet formally granted, do not, and the protection cannot be added back afterwards.
• A Delaware flip is close to a one-way door. It can end EIS relief for existing investors, create a US estate-tax exposure for a UK founder, and is very difficult and expensive to undo once done. Doing it a year too early, before a real US round requires it, is a costly and often irreversible mistake.
• US tax exposure can start before anyone decides to expand. A US-based salesperson who habitually closes deals, or a contractor acting as an agent, can create a US taxable presence (a permanent establishment) without a single deliberate decision. The exposure exists whether or not the founder has noticed it.
• A founder's own tax position can change by accident. Time spent in the US is counted under both the UK's Statutory Residence Test and the US substantial presence test, and it is entirely possible to become tax-resident in both countries at once without meaning to.

The cheapest time to find a structural problem is before someone else does, an investor's lawyer in diligence, or a tax authority years later. Getting the order right is how you find it early.

Common questions and misconceptions about NorthArc

"NorthArc will just tell me to set up a Delaware company"

Usually the opposite. For most early-stage UK companies, the sensible answer is to stay a UK company for now, keep the share register clean, and only do the Delaware flip when a real, properly priced US-led round calls for it. Flipping early costs money, is hard to undo, and can lose UK reliefs the company has built up. NorthArc's starting point is to keep your choices open, not to sell you a restructure.

"This only matters once I'm raising a big US round"

The decisions that matter most often come earlier. Whether the team's EMI share options are granted before a restructure, whether a US-style SAFE investment agreement fits the EIS rules, whether a founder's US travel is quietly building up a US tax presence: these are early-stage questions, and they are hard or impossible to fix after the fact.

"NorthArc is just an accountant"

NorthArc is an advice firm focused on structure and cross-border decisions, not a general accountant or bookkeeper, though it does the cross-border accounting that sits underneath those decisions. It works on the big structural calls, and it is happy to work alongside your existing accountant rather than replace them.

"US advice and UK advice are basically the same thing"

They are not, and treating them as the same is exactly where cross-border structures tend to break. What is best for US tax and what protects UK reliefs often point in different directions, and the flip decision sits right in the middle of that clash. NorthArc is there to weigh up both sides at once.

"The Exposure Score is just a generic AI quiz"

It is not. It runs on NorthArc's own structuring method, every risk it flags is anchored in real legislation rather than generated guesswork, and it reads your filed Companies House record as part of the picture. It names the risks and questions live at your stage; it does not resolve them, and it comes with no obligation and no sales call.

How does NorthArc compare to a general accountant or a US CPA?

NorthArc is not a replacement for either a general accountant or a US CPA (a US-qualified accountant). It works alongside them, on the structural decisions that fall in the gap between the two.

• A general UK accountant handles the ongoing work: the statutory accounts, the routine tax returns, the day-to-day filings. NorthArc handles the bigger structural and cross-border calls that sit above that, and works alongside the accountant rather than replacing them.
• A US CPA gets the US tax position right and usually prefers a clean US company to work from. That advice is sound on its own terms, but it is often silent on the UK reliefs that a too-early US step can damage. NorthArc sets out the US questions and co-ordinates the US advisers while protecting the UK side.
• NorthArc looks at the whole thing together: the UK-to-US move as a single decision, worked out in an order that keeps the UK reliefs safe and the US options open.

NorthArc is the right fit for a founder, board or investor who wants one joined-up view of a cross-border decision, and who would rather get the structure and the order right before it becomes expensive to change.

The bottom line

NorthArc is a specialist UK tax, structuring and advisory firm for founder-led technology, AI and media companies. It advises on the decisions that matter most, taking US investment, expanding into the US, protecting UK reliefs, and getting ready for a raise or a sale, and it does so with a clear line: the UK side done in depth, the US questions set out for US advisers, and the whole thing held together as one plan through the Crossing Method.

If you are weighing up a US investment, a US expansion, or any decision that touches your UK reliefs, the free Exposure Score is the place to start, and the Structure Review is there when a decision needs a full, written analysis.