Global Mobility

All of these factors are leading to an increase in complex cross-border tax, employment, immigration and benefits issues for employers. It can often be difficult for organizations to find the right in-house resources and expertise to advise on the core, overlapping disciplines which feature in these global mobility matters. Covington’s Global Mobility team can navigate clients through these complex issues.

Covington has created an integrated team of experts in the three critical areas: tax, employment/benefits and immigration. The global mobility team assists clients in three main ways:

1.  Auditing/advising on new and existing global mobility policies and programs

2.  Setting up expatriate employee arrangements:

• Tax structuring and social security arrangements
• Choosing and drafting the best contractual format (secondments/dual contracts)
• Choice of law and jurisdiction
• Cross-border enforcement of non-competes and protection of trade secrets
• Immigration clearance matters

3.  Cross-border dismissals:

• Assessing the risk of forum-shopping
• Selecting the best jurisdiction in which to terminate expatriate arrangements (balancing legal, tax, regulatory and commercial perspectives)
• Structuring multi-country release agreements
• Tax treatment of severance payments