Remote work compliance
Remote work compliance software tracks where your employees are actually working and flags the tax, payroll and immigration obligations that follow them. It replaces informal approvals and spreadsheets with a structured process: a request, an automated risk check, a documented decision.If your people work across state lines or borders, those obligations already exist. The question is whether you can see them before they cost you.
Remote work creates four distinct categories of obligation. Most companies track none of them systematically.
An employee working from another country can create a taxable presence for your company in that country. Thresholds vary, and they are often lower than people expect. Once triggered, the exposure is retrospective. 84% of mobility teams lack visibility into employee work locations. (Source: AI Inflection Point report)
Work location determines where income tax and social security are owed. This applies between US states as much as between countries. Obligations can arise from a single day count crossing a threshold.
Working while on a tourist visa is a common and expensive mistake. Right-to-work status, permitted activities, and Schengen day counts all need checking before travel, not after.
You are responsible for employees wherever they work. That includes knowing where they are, and understanding which data protection regime applies to the work they do there.
Manual
ManualWith software
SoftwareSix capabilities separate a system of record from a spreadsheet with extra steps.
Can you see where every employee is working right now, not where their contract says they are based?
Does the risk check run before the decision, or does it produce a report afterwards?
Are your rules applied consistently by software, or interpreted differently by each reviewer?
If a tax authority asks in three years, can you show the request, the assessment, the approver and the date?
Does the tax and immigration content cover the countries and states your people actually work in?
Does it read from your HR, payroll and travel systems, or does it ask you to replace them?
The employee submits a location, dates and a reason through a structured form rather than a message.
The system checks the request against tax thresholds, immigration rules and your own policy before anyone approves it.
Reviewers see the risk assessment alongside the request and approve, decline, or adjust the terms.
Approved arrangements are tracked against their limits, so you know before a threshold is crossed rather than after.
Checks run at the point of request, so the answer can still change.
Day counts and duration limits are monitored continuously rather than reviewed at year end.
The same rules produce the same answer regardless of who reviews the request.
Every request, assessment and approval is retained with attribution, ready if a tax authority asks.
The same compliance questions apply whenever someone works somewhere new. Horizon treats them as one system.
Work-from-anywhere requests, hybrid arrangements, distributed teams
Cross-border trips, day counting, pre-travel risk checks
Permanent moves and assignments, cost modeling, document generation
Right to work, permits, permitted activities, expiry tracking
Risk and compliance
Know which obligations exist before they are triggered, not during an audit.
HR
Give employees a consistent answer on flexibility without creating legal exposure.
Mobility
Replace manual case handling with a process that runs itself for straightforward requests.
Finance
Understand the tax and payroll consequences of work location while decisions are still reversible.
Horizon manages remote work as one type of employee movement among several, on a single platform.
Software that tracks where employees are working and identifies the tax, payroll, immigration and duty-of-care obligations created by those locations. It typically combines a request and approval workflow, automated risk screening, and an audit trail.
An EOR employs people on your behalf in countries where you have no legal entity. Remote work compliance software does not employ anyone. It tells you which obligations a work location creates, applies your policy to the request, and records the decision. Companies often use both, for different problems.
Permanent establishment is when an employee's activity in a country creates a taxable corporate presence there. It can be triggered by the type of work, its duration, or the employee's authority to conclude contracts. The consequence is corporate tax liability in a country where you did not intend to have one.
Yes. State income tax, unemployment insurance and state nexus rules all follow work location. Multi-state payroll obligations are one of the most common exposures, and one of the easiest to miss because no border is crossed.
It depends on the jurisdiction, the duration, the employee's role and whether your company already has a presence there. Thresholds differ by country and by state, which is why the check needs to run against current rules at the point of request rather than from a static list.
Yes, and that is the point. Screening after approval tells you what went wrong. Screening before approval lets you change the answer, shorten the trip, or route it for specialist review.
Book a 30-minute demo. We will show you how Horizon surfaces work-location risk before it becomes a liability.
