Home is where the Heart is (The tax tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra)
I’ve been working extremely hard recently, but I have to say I have achieved a lot! So far this year I have managed a year end compensation review, two cost of living appraisals, a review of our commuter policy and a deep dive into “how we can improve our assignee experience whilst working efficiently with fewer people”! As thought provoking and intellectually challenging my work is, I am tired. I need a break from work. I have started fantasising about how to use my annual leave allowance to recharge, rest and reenergise ready for my next Global Mobility chapter.
The short list is…
Norway, fresh air and tranquillity are promised but what sounds most appealing is apparently it is a country where everything works and people generally do what they say they are going to do (bliss). A scenic train from Oslo to Bergen, a short cruise around the fjords and perhaps a stopover at the Lofoten islands.
Also up for consideration is a hedonistic week in Ibiza, soaking up the Balearic sunshine, dancing away to the wee hours and watching the sunrise as I head home to a beautifully styled bohemian villa.
But one word that keeps playing through my mind is Home. Maybe I’ll just book the time off work, take my work emails off my phone and delete LinkedIn for a week or two to rest and enjoy the bricks and mortar that my daily toil pays for all year round. I could blow the holiday budget on new bed linen and nice food and hunker down and enjoy my home.
Home for me is my gorgeous little house with its neat little driveway and window boxes of geraniums but for some it can mean something entirely different. As I weigh up how to use this precious time to rejuvenate, I can’t help thinking of Anthony “the Assignee with a complex tax residence position”…
Anthony was 38 years old, and much like his Shakespearian namesake, he was a handsome man with rugged good looks, broad shoulders and thick wavy hair. He was a UK citizen, married to a beautiful wife (lets call her Cleopatra for the sake of this story) assigned to the US to work. On the face of it all rather idyllic. A guy in the prime of his life creating a temporary home with the love of his life to further his career.
So how come this situation created a complex tax residence position? I thought he was straightforward? I had worked closely with him to manage his relocation and found him and his wife the perfect home close to the office in the US. However, it transpired that for some reason he had not made the US his “home” and he was struggling to settle. He had been going back and forth to the UK so frequently that he had not broken UK tax residency and consequently he had clocked up quite a tax bill for our Company.
With cost consciousness in mind but more importantly duty of care to Anthony, I contacted him to arrange a catch up to chat through any issues he was having so I could work out whether we could offer him any additional support. I must confess I was worried that perhaps he had personal issues which may be affecting his ability to settle.
I shouldn’t have worried at all…It turned out that unbeknownst to me, Antony was living in the US with his “girlfriend” and he was frequently returning to the UK to see his wife! I guess having the beauty of Cleopatra isn’t always enough and those born with rugged good looks think they can have the best of both worlds!
After a sensitively handled conversation, we agreed that to avoid the tragedy of a broken marriage it might be sensible for Antony to personally settle the tax bill that had been created due to his excessive home leave. This would avoid the need for me to have a joint assignee catch up with himself and Cleopatra. He was remarkably happy with this suggestion, and my part in the play ended there! I exited the stage on the right, stopped thinking about work and packed a small suitcase for a fun weekend in Ibiza, followed by an Express Tour of Norway and a week on my sofa eating snacks and watching NetFlix.