Tax tip: Foreign employees coming to the UK

Many businesses assume that foreign group employees can come to the UK for up to 183 days a year ‘without any tax issues’ arising. This is for example based on the assumption that such individuals would be non-UK resident and ‘protected from UK taxes’ by the relevant double tax agreement (DTAs).

However the existence of DTAs does not provide any innate escape from PAYE. As such if a UK business has group employees working for its benefit in the UK the UK entity has – as a starting position – an obligation to account for PAYE (and potentially National Insurance) on those UK workdays. So employers (and their advisers) should be considering:

• How do we track the UK workdays of these employees?
• How do we gather information about their salary from the overseas entity on a timely basis?
• Are there any ‘easements’ to minimise payroll...