Post-COVID, we see a clear increase in remote and hybrid working, and a trend toward Business Travel slowly but steadily replacing some of the traditional assignments. This transition, although welcomed by the workforce, led to some unprecedented challenges for global organizations and their Global Mobility (GM) functions.
The stealth travelers – With the normalization of remote and hybrid working, and more countries opening their borders to visa-free travelers, business travelers can easily operate under their employers’ radar. Most organizations lack a unified view of where their employees are and the associated compliance risks. With digital border systems like the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES), country authorities may discover your employee’s location before you do! This visibility gap creates a vicious cycle of reactive compliance, which often forces GM teams to construct travel and work history, recalculate taxable compensation, and coordinate Finance, Payroll, HR, and 3rd party vendors on backdated payroll corrections across countries and immigration compliance. Each invisible traveler becomes their own bespoke case, draining GM teams’ resources and preventing scalable processes.
Cost optimization – Cross-border compliance can be frustrating and expensive. Most GM functions have to rely on outdated data for action planning, communications, and cost estimates for business travelers. This challenge can lead to internal budgetary issues as well as external authority penalties. With indirect costs such as time spent resolving Permanent Establishment queries and tax advisory fees, the total cost can become significant very quickly.
Safety first – An employer has a duty of care towards all its employees, and their safety is the top priority. Given current global events, having real-time global data that accurately reflects your business travelers’ locations would enable more efficient responses to security incidents. While emergencies can’t be predicted, it is critical to have accurate intelligence to support our employees’ safety globally, privacy law permitting.
Leverage the right technology platform
Standard GM teams operate with just five people.1 Without an integrated and intuitive technology platform, GM teams face enormous pressure chasing, collecting, and shifting through spreadsheets of travel and activity data before trying to make sense of international immigration and tax laws. Alternatively, they must liaise with multiple vendors, using fragmented data, to remediate existing compliance issues that can lead to expensive compliance costs. Neither of these scenarios leaves the GM team much time or energy to perform beyond an operational function.
Having the right data at the right time enables businesses to:
- Gain a trusted and comprehensive view of global travel risks:
Stakeholders gain instant visibility of their global workforces and any compliance obligations their travel activities may trigger. With one single source of truth, organizations gain peace of mind while GM, HR, and payroll teams can focus on strategy rather than operations.
- Proactively manage compliance issues:
By making travel and activity data available early in the process, organizations can address compliance requirements in real time. This proactivity strengthens internal controls, enables timely communication, and supports compliance actions. Employers can thus avoid penalties, backdated corrections, and expensive remediation work.
- Focus on where it matters the most:
A well-designed travel risk solution supports businesses and their employees to align on what data is appropriate to collect and allows the application of tailored, organization-specific risk thresholds. With business rules and thresholds in place, GM teams can concentrate their limited capacity on more important cases. With the compliance stress out of the way, business travelers, cross-border commuters, and remote workers gain peace of mind to focus on settling in. - Scale global talent distribution with confidence:
With access to such rich intelligence across the global mobile workforce, GM teams will be able to advise on global expansion, talent deployment, remote working polices, and cross-border collaboration, making them true strategic partners.
In today’s world, business travel risks are complex. Building a robust business travel program enables your team to thrive without the burden of compliance concerns. It’s about ensuring that employees have the proper work authorization and can return home safely to their families at the end of the day.
Linking your Equus Platform with the Equus Compliance Engine transforms business travel compliance by automating risk assessments and integrating with travel booking systems and the Equus Ecosystem. Organizations can implement a set of risk parameters that suit their compliance needs. The solution covers over 150 countries for global travel risk analysis. Permanent Establishment (PE) risk is assessed based on activity patterns and treaty interpretation to proactively manage PE risks by sending pre-warnings or triggering interventions. From the moment a trip is logged, compliance checks run automatically, eliminating manual intervention and reducing administrative burden. Teams spend less time worrying about compliance and more time focusing on cases that matter to them.
Next Steps with Equus
- Request a demo – Request a demo to see how the Equus Compliance Engine can help your organization manage tax risks.
- Ensure compliance – Click here to learn more about the Equus Compliance Engine.
- Get expert support – Contact us to craft a smart and compliant business travel tax strategy for your organization.
- Key 2022 Evolving Global Mobility Landscape Report
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equus-software-releases-2022-global-mobility-technologylandscape-survey-results-in-partnership-with-global-mobility-executive-301734168.html ↩︎
