GTN Mobility Tax Blog

Compensation collection for international assignments comes with many moving parts, and payroll and mobility teams often run into the same core questions. From coordinating global data to navigating split payroll, per diems, and year-end reporting, each step has its own requirements and potential pitfalls.

The United States continues to strengthen its position as the global hub for high-net-worth earners. In fact, the US population of high earners climbed 7.6 percent last year, making it the fastest-growing location for this group. But the US also features complicated tax rules for high-earning non-citizens. Too often, a high-net-worth individual (HNWI) will relocate to the US only to be hit by unexpected taxes, overtaxed investments, or penalties for misreporting.

In this article, we lay out the most common tax misconceptions for relocating HNWIs and provide three money-saving relocation tax planning tips to help high-net-worth earners reduce their tax anxieties.

Important note on streamlined filing compliance procedures -- This article specifically discusses the streamlined foreign procedures, not the domestic procedures. To qualify for the foreign procedures, a taxpayer must meet the IRS’s non-residency requirement. For a US citizen, this means that in one of the past three years for which the original or properly extended US tax return due date has passed, they did not have a US residence and were physically present outside the US for at least 330 full days.

US citizens and permanent residents (green card holders) working outside the United States generally are still required to file annual US tax returns, and the IRS is constantly updating its technology to better locate non-filing taxpayers and bring them into compliance. However, in addition to increasing its enforcement capabilities, the IRS has also taken steps to encourage non-filers to come into compliance by waiving penalties for those taxpayers eligible to take advantage of the streamlined filing compliance procedures (streamlined procedures).

This article was originally published in TLNT.

As the workforce continues to race toward remote work, digital nomads – office-less, remote workers – are increasingly common.

Latest figures suggest there are there are more than 40 million digital nomads worldwide in 2024, and 17.3 million of these are in the US alone (whose numbers were up 2% in 2023 compared to 2022).

Source: https://pumble.com

The result of this, however, is that countries are pouncing on this growing trend and providing a relatively new visa option: the digital nomad visa.

This article was originally published in Corporate Compliance Insights.

As remote work continues to charge full steam ahead, digital nomad visas are popping up at an increasing rate around the globe. These visas allow remote employees to legally conduct business from within countries abroad.

However, HR and other corporate leaders often misunderstand how these visas work — and how little they protect the company from additional tax liabilities. As more countries offer digital nomad visas, HR leaders need to ensure their employees aren’t ignoring the tax implications that arise out of remote work.

To protect against tax violations, fines, audits and reputational damage, HR leaders need to understand exactly what these increasingly popular visas cover and what risks they expose the employee and company to.

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of self-initiated global mobility moves, where employees relocate internationally with little or no company assistance. These types of moves, often referred to as "off program" or "self-requested," present unique tax challenges for both the employees and employers involved—especially when HR managers and companies are trying to balance cost considerations with their duty of care to employees.