Every country, most US states, and some cities have laws about how many days you can spend in their jurisdiction before being considered
a “tax resident”.
You do not want to accidentally become a tax resident. If you do, you can be taxed not just on any income you earned in that jurisdiction,
you can be taxed on all your income, no matter where it was earned. And possibly fined. Or jailed. Not good.
There are similar rules for businesses. They state how many days all your employees combined can spend in a jurisdiction before your
company is considered to have a “permanent establishment” there.
A large consultancy was recently fined millions of dollars because they weren’t paying attention to permanent establishment laws.
Extremely undesirable.
A bit more about permanent establishment. If your staff members Susie and Bob go to Belgium for five days at the same time,
that’s still just five days your company is considered to be in country.
If Susie goes to Belgium for five days, and then Bob goes the next month for five days, your company is considered to have
been in country for ten days.
One last point: Tax rules are individual to each jurisdiction, and can be incredibly complex. If you want to look up the
tax rules for a specific country, use the country tax lookup in the footer below.
The Mia Bazo Tax Compliance service automatically keeps you updated on days spent in jurisdiction, with
- notifications of how many days you have left in a jurisdiction, and
- warning notices if you’re approaching or have breached a threshold.
Mia Bazo maintains a permanent record of your (or your company/group’s) travels, which simplifies tax reporting and protects you if you’re audited.
We recommend that companies also use the Tax Compliance service to set their own, more conservative thresholds. Our recommended threshold is 45 days in jurisdiction.
The Mia Bazo tax compliance tool is designed for SMEs and individuals. Most competitors offer their tools solely to large enterprises. Comparable, stand-alone tools do not have the advantage of integration with the rest of your travel data.