Every global work move creates tax consequences somewhere, yet the tax function is often the last to know. Global workforce decisions rarely start with tax; they quite rightly start with the business need to put the right skills in the right place, whether that means supporting a client or function overseas, enabling someone to work remotely from another country, or deploying a project team quickly.
The question is usually, “Can this person do the work, and how quickly can we get them there?”
The tax question often comes much later: “What tax consequences does this movement create for the employee and the organization?” This sequence is becoming harder to sustain.
As global work becomes more fluid—with organizations increasingly embracing nontraditional mobility arrangements1 such as international remote work, virtual assignments, and cross-border commuting—corporate, individual, and employment tax implications can arise from arrangements that may once have seemed too short, informal, or infrequent to warrant much attention.
A series of business trips, a change in remote-working location, an assignment that ends earlier than planned, or a cross-border hire can all change an individual’s tax position—and potentially create obligations for the organization. For example, in Vialto’s analysis of 1.7 million business trips assessed between 2022 and 2024, 10% of relevant trips triggered income tax action requirements and 16% triggered social security obligations following the preliminary assessment.
The solution is not to make every workforce decision a lengthy tax assessment exercise—it is to consider tax visibility much earlier in the decision itself.
Tax is often considered too late
Nearly half of organizations (49%) in a Vialto survey2 cited compliance as a key challenge, suggesting many continue to grapple with the complexity of managing increasingly diverse forms of global mobility.
In many organizations, the tax team needs information spread across multiple organizational functions, with HR holding employee data, the mobility team managing formal assignments, travel having visibility into business trips, and payroll holding compensation information. Tax may only enter the conversation when a case is referred or a filing obligation emerges, by which point actions have already been taken and the full picture can be difficult to reconstruct.
The challenge is not necessarily that any one function is doing its job poorly; it is that the information remains fragmented, leaving the organization without a cohesive view.
A tax team can’t assess what it doesn’t know. Without insight into where people are working, how long they are there, what work they are performing, and how arrangements have changed, it becomes harder to identify exposure early. By the time an issue reaches tax, the organization may already be dealing with a liability, reporting requirement, or remediation that is harder and more expensive to resolve. One client, for example, signed off on the move of a senior executive and announced it to the business before involving tax. When tax finally entered the discussion, it provided costing for the individual—at three times the budgeted amount. And by that point, it was too late.
What does it mean to move tax considerations upstream?
Moving tax upstream means bringing tax into the conversation before a workforce decision is finalized.
Consider a business choosing among several employees for an international project. All may have the right to work and the required skills, but they may not be equally straightforward to deploy.
One may already have significant activity in the destination country. Another may have recently traveled there. A third may require a longer-term arrangement with additional payroll and tax consequences.
From a talent perspective, these options may look similar. From a tax perspective, they may not.
The same applies to decisions about how the work deployment should be structured. Should someone travel regularly, work remotely from another country, undertake a formal assignment, or be hired locally?
The tax function can be critical in helping to inform these choices rather than simply assessing the consequences afterward. This does not mean tax should determine the workforce decision. It simply means business leaders should be fully informed and understand the relevant implications before committing to a particular approach. Hiring a local resource at a quarter of the cost, for example, might provide greater ROI than moving a senior leader—having tax at the table during the decision-making process can help unearth hidden costs and lead to a better overall solution.
What tax information matters before people move?
The answer will vary depending on the individual’s situation, activity, and the jurisdictions involved, but organizations generally need visibility into a few fundamentals:
- Location: Where people are working, including business travel, remote work, and formal assignments
- Duration: How long they are working there and whether actual timing differs from the original plan
- Nature of work: The activities being performed, because the work being done can matter as much as physical presence
- Work arrangement: How individuals are employed and compensated
- Changes in circumstances: Additional travel, extensions, early returns, or changes in working arrangements
That last point is critical because global work rarely follows the original plan. An assignment may end earlier than expected, a business trip may turn into repeated travel, an employee may shift to remote work from another country, or a project may expand to require additional activity.
Connected data improves tax decision-making
Integrated data and systems can help tax teams see both individual exposure and emerging patterns earlier.
Consider multiple employees each undertaking relatively short periods of business travel into the same jurisdiction. Viewed individually, each trip may appear unremarkable. Viewed collectively, the activity could warrant a different conversation.
The same principle applies to compensation. An employee returning from an overseas assignment earlier than planned may have a different tax position than initially anticipated, particularly where bonuses, equity, or other compensation are involved.
These are not just tax filing problems; these are problems of visibility (the whole picture), data (compensation wherever it is earned), and timing (before, during, or after the work-abroad period).
Connected data doesn’t eliminate tax complexity: It gives organizations a better chance of seeing complexity coming—and deciding what to do about it before it’s too late.
How do organizations bring tax into early global workforce decisions?
Three questions offer a useful starting point:
1. Do we know where our people are physically working?
That’s not just where formal assignments are recorded but where employees travel, work remotely, and undertake business activities.
2. Can tax access the full information it needs?
If specialists routinely need to piece together basic facts from multiple places like HR, payroll, travel, and mobility systems, the operating model itself is creating friction.
3. Are we using tax insight to influence decisions or only validate them afterward?
The goal is not to add another layer of bureaucracy but to establish the connected data, clear escalation points, and specialist input needed to move quickly without moving blindly.
The shift that matters: From compliance to visibility
Global work is becoming more dynamic while regulatory oversight is becoming more connected globally. Organizations today have less room to rely on fragmented information and retrospective compliance.
For tax, moving upstream is ultimately about changing the function’s role—from determining consequences after the fact to providing insight that can influence workforce decisions at the outset.
This is the broader opportunity behind connected compliance: bringing together information, processes, and expertise to understand tax consequences across the global work lifecycle, rather than treating each obligation in isolation.
Vialto’s Connected compliance in global work: The hidden competitive advantage ebook explores this broader shift across tax, immigration, payroll, social security, and employment considerations. Read it to see what a genuinely connected approach looks like in practice.
For organizations looking specifically at tax, the starting point is straightforward: Gain visibility earlier, connect the right data, and bring specialist judgment into the decisions that matter.
Because in global work, the best tax outcome is the one you see coming.
Sources:
1Mobility Agility: Remote working and non-traditional mobility survey, Vialto (2024).
2Mobility Matters: Key insights into mobility policies and practices survey, Vialto (2025).