Expatriate and Employment Tax
Tax solutions for organisations and their expatriate employees.
Our Expertise
We specialise in providing expatriate and employment tax solutions. With over 15 years of combined professional services and in-house tax experience, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors by having worked on the ‘client side’, being commercially focused whilst managing the tax risk for our clients.
For more information on Trident's Expat Services
We have developed various strategies to help organisations with planning through each stage of an assignment lifecycle. We are here to assist from start to finish.
Before an overseas assignment commences, we highly recommend a cost projection to be done. We can assist you with costing the assignment to avoid any surprises and allow you to price the assignment competitively for any tenders you may be undertaking.
We can assist you with reviewing the current salary package that you provide your employees and provide you with tax effective alternatives that benefit you and your employees. We can work with your payroll team to implement the suggested solution. We keep things simple and make implementation easy to follow.
Despite the expatriate workforce forming a small percentage of a business’ total workforce, it often causes the most headaches for the payroll team. In addition to providing a tailored tax solution, we can also assist your payroll team with implementing the payroll for your expatriate workforce. If you are a foreign company looking to establish a business in Australia, we can assist you with performing a ‘shadow’ payroll function in Australia to help ease the burden of compliance in Australia.
We can assist you with establishing tax policies that follow best practice for your expatriate workforce. Policies such as tax equalisation may assist with alleviating the financial uncertainty for your expatriate workforce of working in a different tax jurisdiction. Whether you require a review of your existing policy or a development of a new policy, we are here to assist you.
Employee share schemes or option plans can be an effective way of engaging and retaining your employees. Some of the work that we have undertaken for our clients include a review of their existing share plans and determining the eligibility for tax exemption. We have also assisted clients with developing new tax effective share or option plans and meeting year end reporting obligations with the ATO.
Certain exemptions from Superannuation Guarantee (“SG”) may apply depending on the particular circumstances of your expatriate employees. Employees coming to Australia may be exempt from SG where a certificate of coverage applies or the individual qualifies as a ‘senior executive’ for exemption purposes. For employees working outside Australia, you may be obligated to pay SG depending on their tax residence status. We can help you determine what your obligations are and identify any applicable exemptions.
We provide payroll tax compliance and consulting services for all states and territory in Australia. A specific exemption may apply for expatriates working outside of Australia. Where employees are working interstate, it may trigger a payroll tax obligation in that state or territory. We can review your employees’ assignment status and assist you in determining whether an exemption applies or manage any obligations arising in another state or territory. We have experience in dealing with payroll tax audits and can therefore alleviate the burden of managing the audit process for your organisation and represent you before the state revenue office.
We can take the burden out of your company’s year end FBT obligation by assisting you with the preparation and lodgement of your company’s FBT return. We can help you identify tax concessions on the various benefits that you may provide and how to effectively deliver those benefits to your employees. If your employee is relocating temporarily or permanently, either domestically within Australia or into or out of Australia, there are a number of tax exempt benefits that you may be able to provide your employees. There were significant changes to the living away from home allowance (LAFHA) rules effective 1 October 2012. We can assist you with navigating through the changes and making your salary package more attractive for your employees.
We have prepared several thousand expatriate tax returns for various multinational companies. You can be confident that we have the experience to assist your expatriate workforce with their individual income tax filing obligations. We are more than ‘form fillers’. We take a proactive approach and provide your employees with advice on how best to maximise their income tax position. We take the burden out of their tax filing obligations so they can concentrate on what they do best.
Our Clients
We offer the full range of expatriate and employment tax services. Our goal is to provide the best, tailored tax solutions for companies, government entities, not for profit organisations as well as individuals that are planning an international or domestic assignment.
The expatriate tax programs that we currently manage range from large programs with more than 250 employees to smaller expatriate programs with less than 10 employees.
Our Approach
Tailored Business Advice
We understand that each organisation is unique and that each domestic or international assignment it embarks upon presents its own challenges and opportunities. Our tax solutions are always tailored to your organisation and employees’ unique situation so you will never receive ‘cookie cutter’ advice.
Dedicated & Personal
We love what we do. We approach each client engagement with the same high level of enthusiasm and dedication. We are friendly and approachable, encouraging open and honest discussion. By definition our size means that the service you get is a personal one – with direct access to the firm’s principal at all times.
Clear Solutions
We keep our tax solutions succinct and to the point. We tell everything our clients need to know without overwhelming them with complex tax jargon.