Remote work

⚡tl;dr when allowing employees to work remotely, you must consider taxes (both for the company and for the employees), social contributions , and data privacy generally, remote work abroad for up to 25% of the time is safe it can be more depending on the country posting is an interesting solution to allow a formerly swiss based employee to work from abroad for a defined period of time book a free call with us what is remote work? remote work usually involves working outside the normal office premises at home or at any other location working hours are usually very flexible and can be freely arranged in principle, with a completely remote position, you do not have to come to the company on site at all it has to be distinguished from "working from home", which means working from a designated private environment there are no clear barriers, and the concepts are fluid what to consider? office space the employee could be entitled to compensation if he works permanently outside the office premises and the employer does not provide him with a workplace concretely, this means that the employer could have to pay for the furniture, the tech material required, or even the difference of rent for an additional room taxes cross border taxes are a complicated topic for individual cases, we advise you to speak with a tax expert reach out to us if you would like to be put in contact with our tax expert employee taxes double taxation treaties provide specific rules and usually refer to the notion of residence they are, however, usually not suited to remote work but can be interpreted by analogy, keeping in mind their purpose being to avoid double taxation as long as the employee remains resident in switzerland and does not spend more than a defined number of days in one other country (e g , 183 days for france and germany), they will not, as a rule, become liable for taxes abroad in the absence of a double taxation treaty, the employee might be taxed both in switzerland and abroad you can find more information on the double taxation treaties concluded by switzerland here corporate taxes if you employ (in particular) executives who regularly and continuously work in a cross border home office, there is a risk that the home office situation will give rise to a permanent establishment abroad this means that you run the risk of becoming liable to tax abroad on part of the business profits for normal employees, it is usually fine as long as there are less than 5 employees in a given country and if they effectively support the swiss business and do no work locally however, this is not a rule and must be assessed on a case by case basis social contributions generally, a swiss employee performing up to 25% of their working time abroad will remain subject to swiss social contributions rules switzerland recently signed a multilateral agreement (notably with austria, belgium, germany, and spain; but not with france or italy) allowing cross border workers who are employed by a swiss employer and who work remotely for a maximum of 49 9% of their total working hours from one of these countries to remain subject to swiss social security the agreement lists criteria and provides for some exceptions to be analyzed on a case by case basis for countries outside of the eu/efta area, specific rules can be found in bilateral social security agreements in general, the place of acquisition principle applies without such agreements, a double subordination could arise data protection according to privacy laws, employers must ensure data security through appropriate technical and organizational measures this includes vpn ensure that unauthorized people cannot view the screen (screen lock, cover, etc ) ensure that physical files are not stored and destroyed at home workshops on data security best practices policy a remote work policy is in place it notably clarifies if and where remote work is authorized and what measures must be taken (vpn, call confidentiality, etc ) desk desk sharing is provided and the employees have the right, but not the obligation, to work remotely this usually prevents the employer from having to pay expenses for the employee's remote work setup how do i get this done? check out our remote work workshop package and book a free call with us to discuss the next steps