More and more organisations are recognising the extent and complexity of employment tax and are engaging in-house employment tax specialists to manage this on a global or regional level. But how do they go about it?
In a previous article by Karyn Amaro (see "Related Content") we talked about the challenges of employment tax obligations arising from, and being managed across, a wide number of functions within a business. This complexity only increases where more than one country is involved.
One of the key challenges is finding the time to devote to proactive employment tax risk management when there are often immediate issues to address and fires to put out, such as investigating errors, supporting M&A activity, or managing ongoing audits by tax authorities. Secondly, where do you start in understanding the risks on a global scale and knowing where to focus scarce time and resources?
Firstly, it’s useful to consider which are your highest risk locations using two lenses:
Based on this, for the locations you see as highest priority you might want to undertake a review. To do this you’re likely to need to know a few things first:
