GTN Mobility Tax Blog

The COVID-19 pandemic has inadvertently resulted in a surge of “work-from-home” employees, and for many companies, it has proved to be a positive addition to their workplace culture. Because of this positive feedback and overall ease of having employees working from home, companies are allowing more of their employees to work remotely on a regular basis. According to a March 2020 article by Forbes, remote work increased 159% between 2002 and 2017 due to various benefits. The fact that COVID-19 has forced more companies to allow their employees to work remotely will likely mean this already growing trend will continue and even accelerate in the future. This migration to having more remote workers is likely to be just one of many significant changes as a result of COVID-19 and although working from home is not a new concept, having such an increase in remote workers will create new issues for companies to consider.

COVID-19, current travel restrictions, and government and business shutdowns have certainly made it difficult for many mobile employees to carry out “business as usual.” This can be particularly true for employees that were on a short-term or long-term assignment prior to COVID-19. Because of safety considerations or travel restrictions, two common scenarios that have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic include:

One of the most unpleasant surprises a global mobility manager may encounter is receiving an unexpected request to pay a large tax payment on behalf of a tax equalized assignee. With the right tax accrual process in place, you can avoid those unpleasant tax payment surprises.

The number of businesses choosing to move employees abroad, as part of their efforts to increase their international presence, is increasing each year. Unfortunately, some businesses are exposing themselves to unnecessary risks when it comes to tax compliance in the Home and Host countries of those employees by failing to have a plan in place to avoid mobility tax problems. Below are five common mistakes made by employers who move employees abroad.

It is not uncommon for businesses expanding their operations across international borders to discover that moving employees abroad has created tax issues—and unfortunately, they often don’t discover this until they receive notice that overseas employees are noncompliant in either their Home or Host country.