WFH - From Abroad - Why not?

The main reason companies don't allow it is for Tax

If you have employees working in a foreign country, the local tax authorities may deem that your organisation has created a "Permanent Establishment", which can lead to multiple risks in relation to tax and corporate admin

"A permanent establishment (PE) is a fixed place of business that generally gives rise to income or value-added tax liability in a particular jurisdiction. The term is defined in many income tax treaties and in most European Union Value Added Tax systems"
 
willhub said:
With the technological capability its clear that we could Work from home - WFH and not be in the UK with no detriment to the employer.

A few years ago a college of mine was actually working from home, or rather, from Lisbon, and everyone was non the wiser, they knew they'd need to be back in the office at some point so took that into account.

However, going forward, why can employers not take employees work-life into account and accept that working from abroad with a UK salary would greatly improve employee's mental health and wellbeing.

Is it the tax implications? Maybe in the future we'll progress towards it?

I think the flight costs would be cheaper than a weekly train 112 miles from the North East of the UK to Manchester for me if I were the re-locate from the north west.
Click to expand...
You still need the right to work overseas.
 
Security reasons. - Business may be tightly controlling external connections.

Tax tends to be the main one but occassionally I've seen security from a "proving compliance" standpoint being listed as a reason also. Ultimately these companies are of the opinion that if it's a big issue for staff, they'd just rather employ someone else.
 
There are a whole host of reasons for a company to not want to do it, with varying degrees of selfishness that people have outlined above. For the employees I think it's potentially a double edged sword too- once employers realise there's no reason for you to be local, the next step is to wonder why they need to pay you specifically higher 'local' wages to work remotely and then start hiring people remotely on cheap wages instead.
 
willhub said:
I work for a high street bank and it makes me wonder as I'm sure we have offices abroad.
Click to expand...
I've worked for multiple banks and most do.

When I worked for the last two banks I had almost no-one in my team in the London office. So I would come into work and then spend all day on conference calls with people in the US, India, Mexico, Singapore, etc. It was ridiculous after the pandemic lockdowns when we were being called back into work despite there being no-one in my team that was in my office. They were insisting I spend time and money traveling into central London to sit on a call with the same people I could sit on a call at home. For various reasons that didn't happen in the end though. In the end I spent around 3 years 100% remotely working from home.

On the flip side they did make me redundant so maybe they realised there was no value in being in the office and moved my role out to a cheaper person in India.
 
Last edited:
Raumarik said:
Security reasons. - Business may be tightly controlling external connections.
Click to expand...
That's a small use case nowadays. For such companies then working from home wouldn't be possible either. Security measures can be put in place for most remote working with VPN's, multi factor authentication, etc.
 
Personal tax, company tax and contract/employment law makes it a lot more difficult. It can be ok for short periods but to be out of the country for an extended period will depend on the rules in the UK, the country you are travelling to and company policy. It’s not straight forward.
 
My company has recently updated it's guidance on this. You have to request for approval to do it, but they will allow you to work up to 4 weeks abroad within a given 12 month period. The only caveat is that the country must have a local HR department. - We're a big company so we do operate in most mainstream countries so will have HR offices in those. It'll be the smaller/niche countries that we don't operate in that people won't be able to work abroad from.
 
Quite a few people talking about what amounts to taking a working holiday, i.e. working during a few weeks of winter sun somewhere but I thought the OP was talking more about permanent relocation
 
Last edited:
I saw something like this on social media where some dude was working abroad in a 5 star hotel all inclusive for months and it was cheaper than living in the UK!

Be careful what you wish for though because if legislation becomes active that would allow it then goodbye decent wages as masses of Indians will do your job for a quarter of the wage.

The last thing I would want going forward is a WFH job because you are the easiest thing to replace by cheaper labour.
 
If you move somewhere much cheaper then expect your salary to match local rates.

Working remotely in a foreign country is easier if your employer has an office there. Otherwise things gets very difficult legally
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom