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When setting up a new team in a foreign location, many businesses choose to relocate some of their own employees first to test the market and set up operations for the domestic hires. Obtaining visas and setting up expatriate packages is a time consuming and often costly exercise and so needs to be understood in detail prior to those individuals entering the country.

Common misconceptions include assuming the visa process can be dealt with in a couple of weeks, or that no tax will be payable in the UK for the first 183 days.

To ensure that you move forward in the correct way without wasting any unnecessary time, begin by asking yourselves the following questions; 

• How long is the employee planning to relocate for?
• Is this individual the first employee in that country or are there already domestic hires?
• Once this employee relocates, how long will it take the company to establish a trading presence?

Answers to these questions may change the course of action required when looking at immigration planning. 

As an example using UK rules, if the individual is the first employee in the UK and the UK entity is yet to start trading, a UK Expansion Worker Visa may be granted. If the business already has a UK entity and hired some domestic employees, you will likely need to explore the Skilled or Specialist Worker route.

You will also need to understand the local employment tax and social security treatment for the different options, the cost to the business, any relocation packages, the timescale of the process end-to-end, as well as the accounting transactions that will need to be booked in both the UK and home country accounts.

We can help

For each employee / remuneration level we can prepare some scenario-based examples showing the employer and employee costs to enable you and your employee to fully understand the tax implications of working abroad.  We can then support you with all necessary tax filings.

Our UK HR team works alongside immigration lawyers, to provide support by setting up the mandatory HR requirements that the UK Border Agency expects to see. These form part of your sponsorship licence application. As a business, you are required to provide evidence of robust HR processes and procedures to support your application and the ongoing requirements of employing migrant workers in the UK.