Moving Country for WFH

Nero2900

There is a trend thats growing legs with Irish employees moving to another Country and continuing working for same company as work from home.

Is anyone noticing this? I am seeing a lot where I work and hearing friends say same.

What are legal and tax implications here. I mean are employers allowed have staff working anywhere in Europe as remote workers, can they go further afield?.

Trigger Happy

Tax residence and domicile in Ireland (citizensinformation.ie)

You pay income taxes in the country you are resident in for the majority of your time. Your employer may not want the hassle of setting you up as an employee in a non-ireland country.

That said - do people who do not need a presence in a local office just work from home in a different country without advising their employer and the tax man - yes.

LunaLoo

My other half works in IT and has been moved to full time wfh now post covid with office only available for hot desks. But employees have to be available to come into office on short notice.

It's one of the main reasons we're selling up and getting out of the city. Commute still manageable if needed but will have benefits of more space. We will be staying in Ireland though.

There is a lot of tax implications for working outside the state, and yes people are definitely doing it without employers knowledge. I know it was very popular for people working in London for a time where it was actually cheaper shorter distance and less hassle to commute 3 times a week from Spain or France with added bonus of better quality of life.

dennyk

Performing work in a different country usually means your employer is subject to employment law in that country and is liable for taxes and other employment-related fees and registrations in that country. This can be the case even if you are not in that country long enough to be liable for personal income tax per their tax laws; the threshold for employer liability is usually much shorter than for personal tax residency, and in some countries there is no minimal threshold at all in the law; if an employer has an employee physically in that country while performing work for any length of time, they are liable. This is the case whether the other country is in the EU or outside; even within the EU, every country has its own employment laws and tax system.

If you move to another country without your employer's blessing, you will be found out eventually, and probably sooner rather than later unless your employer's IT department is inept. If you're very lucky, your employer will simply give you an ultimatum to return to Ireland within a short time frame. If you're not, they'll sack you on the spot for gross misconduct and violation of company policy (because if your employer is the slightest bit competent, this will be prohibited by their policies).

If you do get your employer's blessing, it will likely require you to move to a country where they already have an office or some other business presence and are already set up to employ workers locally. You can also expect to receive a salary adjustment based on the local market in most cases, unless the assignment is only for a limited time or your company is incredibly generous and bad with money, so don't plan to be living large in Portugal on a Dublin salary indefinitely...

timetogo1

I work in a large company. We've found some employees that have moved without the companies knowledge. We use a VPN and it's pretty straightforward to run a report to show where users are logging in from.

Technically you could get around that but 99% of users won't know what to do or even know that this info is available and you could be tripped up any time you're asked to come into the office.

So not worth doing without the companies knowledge.

With that said, the company I'm in has offices in many countries so doesn't really care if we want to move (subject to laws / regulators requirements) but they do have different payscales for our grades in different countries so I couldn't move to a cheaper country and expect my Irish wages.

And you are subject to the laws of the country you reside in. In a previous company I worked for we had Irish & French employees. When the company gave us a One4All bonus card for €250 tax free they couldn't do that for the French employees so they planned to give them €250 in their pay. When the French employees saw they were going to be taxed on it they wanted more of a bonus so they'd get the same as us. The company went for the easier option and just gave everybody the €250 in our pay (so the Irish people didn't get the tax free bit, but it was equal for everybody).

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058247181/moving-country-for-wfh

Don't confuse a few friends trying to do this with a trend, there is a kind of a trend with some to become digital nomads, but the is not the same thing.

You have no legal right to move to an EU/EEA/CH state and work remotely for a start, FMOP agreements don't cover it. To do it legally you would either have to move there for the purposes of family reunification or have already established permanent residence status as provided by the directive before hand.

Sure you can be a digital nomad for a while, but eventually everyone wants to settled down and establish a life for themselves and that is when you will have issues in interacting with officialdom - sending kids to school, full healthcare, pensions and all the usual stuff.

The Blended Working Framework for the Civil Service published by DPER states that:

With the exception of employees who reside in Northern Ireland and those posted to specific roles or assignments such as a consulate/embassy, remote working outside of the State will not be facilitated. It should be noted that in respect of employees residing in Northern Ireland, in some situations taxing rights on their employment income may arise in Northern Ireland. In this scenario, such employees may be exposed to double taxation where employment duties are also performed in the State.

Kartoshka

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058247181/moving-country-for-wfh

I've heard a few instances of it but it's really not that common - the stories just stick out because they're unusual.

Other than the tax implications an employer's insurances often won't cover staff who live permanently abroad and this can stop employers from even considering facilitating overseas remote work. For people who don't work in large multi-nationals it's unlikely to be a thing that takes off.

3DataModem

The main implication for employers for senior roles is the place of the work, not the employee.

If one of the senior managers in Twitter in Dublin (who are entitled to work from home forever) chose to work from another country (say, France) this would have tax implications for the Twitter business, as the French tax authorities could claim that Twitter is being partly run from France, and tax Twitter accordingly.

I have worked in companies where the CEO was not permitted to attend meetings for more than one consecutive day in a certain office, to avoid any implication that he was running the business from there.