Ryan Ludden from Sprintax highlights the massive, untapped opportunity in cross-border tax recovery, proving his point right away by letting the data do the talking. He points out that research by Deloitte and McKinsey that suggested $15 billion in reclaimable cross-border withholding tax was left untouched in 2025, money that’s essentially sitting with tax authorities waiting for investors and global employee shareholders to claim it. The core problem is that claiming this money back is difficult as a study by the EU Commission showed that 70% of retail investors who had reclaimable tax left unclaimed. Why? Ludden summarizes the issue as the “four C’s”, the process is clunky, complex, confusing, and costly as the process is often a paper-based, manual and requires specific in-house knowledge, leading many to simply cut their losses.
Ludden then explains how Sprintax Dividends is changing this narrative by making withholding tax relief and reclaim accessible through a digital platform and shares a powerful real-life case study involving a well-known Swiss multinational that has a global base of employee shareholders. These investors were subject to a high 35% dividend withholding tax in Switzerland, and many didn’t even realize this amount was being deducted from their paycheck. To solve this, Sprintax first focused on awareness and launched a campaign complete with webinars, whitepapers, and videos. Once educated, investors were moved to Sprintax’s platform, which simplified the entire process. The technology guides the user to confirm their tax residency, calculates their eligibility in real-time, and uses OCR and AI to read digitally uploaded supporting documents.
This automation eliminates the need for the investor to manually complete complicated tax forms as Sprintax even handles the submission, sometimes using digitally signed power of attorneys to file the reclaim on the client’s behalf. A huge advantage is the use of a global payment provider, TransferMate, which allows them to bypass cross-border banking fees, ensuring the refund goes directly into the investor’s bank account quickly, whether they are in Ireland, the US, or elsewhere globally. For the multinational client, this solution unlocked significant value, providing real-time reporting that showed, country by country, exactly how much dividend withholding tax was flowing back into the pockets of their employee shareholders. This value is set to rise exponentially as more employees adopt the technology.
Ultimately, Ludden sees Sprintax’s mission for the next three to five years as becoming the industry standard for cross-border withholding tax recovery and relief. The goal isn’t just to simplify reclaims but to support the entire tax ecosystem as it undergoes digital transformation, helping organizations stay agile amid constantly changing tax rules. Most importantly, Sprintax wants to see a fundamental shift: supporting investors to get taxed at the correct rate up front, making the tedious reclaim process the rare exception rather than the disappointing norm.