The 183-Rule & Work-from-Anywhere

There's been an ongoing discussion on working vs. presence days – and how to formulate it rightly in the company policy in your work-from-anywhere scheme.

Most company policies around remote work abroad include a maximum (30/60/etc.) of sometimes presence days. Other policies only include working days.

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Let’s clarify:
Working days are days an employee works abroad for the company – regardless of how many hours the employee did so
Presence days are all days an employee is abroad working and/or for leisure (incl. the weekends & holidays)

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This is quite a complex topic.

After all, as an employer, you have little to say on days that the employee is not working. On the other hand, because of the compliance aspects around presence, it is also understandable that companies decide to include a threshold for presence days.

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"For compliance, working days and presence days are both relevant as both have legal impacts!"

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Why do you need to check “the days spent” in general?

As days have a strong impact on compliance risk factors, such as wage tax, permanent establishment, work entitlement, social security, etc., the employer must be aware of the accumulated presence days per country (see above).

This way, the employer can limit the compliance risk – both for them, but also protect the employee. Another reason to limit the number of days abroad is to ensure office presence. For this, only working days need to be taken into consideration.

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Why do also presence days matter for compliance?

While for some dimensions, such as labour law or permanent establishment, (only) working days need to be taken into account, for most risk factors also presence days have a tremendous legal impact. Such as for:

·     E.g. wage tax

·     E.g. social security

·     E.g. work entitlement & registration

To correctly assess the compliance risks, WorkFlex needs to know how long someone is gone, e.g. for Center of Vital Interest Discussions and the 25% rule remainder in home country social security. So not only working more than 183 days in one country triggers compliance risks, but also vacations, business trips, & weekends count into the 183-day rule as well.

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Deep-Dive: What is the rationale behind the 183 days?

Whether you manage business travelers, short-term international employees, or remote workers, you have no doubt heard about the "183-day rule".

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This rule states – simplified – that an employee will not become taxable in the destination country, as long as his/her overall presence in that country remains below 183 days per year – which can be a calendar year, tax year, or any running 12-month period).

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Both globally and domestically, many tax jurisdictions expect an employer (as well as the employee) to track and report non-resident business travel. However, simply applying a "183-day" threshold does not always work to ensure tax compliance.

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The OECD commentary says:
Although various formulas have been used by member countries to calculate the 183-day period, there is only one way that is consistent with the wording of this paragraph: the “days of physical presence” method. The application of this method is straightforward as the individual is either present in a country or is not. (Source: Bundesfinanzministerium)

Therefore, the183-day rule refers to presence days (incl. weekends), so business travel, vacation, and workation count in this timeframe. It follows from these principles that any entire day spent outside the State of activity, whether for holidays, business trips, or any other reason, should not be taken into account. A day during any part of which, however brief, the taxpayer is present in a State counts as a day of presence in that State for purposes of computing the 183-day period. (Source: OECD, p.210)

If a double taxation agreement (DTA; German: DBA) bases the 183-day period on the tax year or calendar year instead of a twelve-month period, the days of stay must be determined separately for each tax year or calendar year. In Germany, the tax year corresponds to the calendar year. If the tax year of the other contracting state also corresponds to the calendar year, there are no special requirements if the corresponding DTA is based on the tax year for the calculation of the 183-day period (e.g. DTA-France, DTA-Greece, DTA-Italy). If the tax year of the other contracting state differs from the tax year of Germany (= calendar year), the tax year of the contracting state in which the activity is carried out is decisive.

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WorkFlex Solution

To make sure to correctly count the presence days & working days, WorkFlex has integrated the question "Will you be working throughout the entire stay" on its platform.
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So, for example, if an employee is 5 days abroad in Italy, but only works 3 days there, he will need to answer with "no" and add the number of days they will be working. This enables WorkFlex to accurately count both working days and days of presence in the destination country.

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