AIBU colleague should quit job now that she's moved to another country?

[Waferbiscuit]

In February colleague told our office that she was moving to Spain in the summer and would be resigning in the late Spring in time for the move. She wasn't happy in her role (which was more than a bit evident) and wanted a change - she was moving back home and would look for something there. She told everyone as wanted to be transparent about what was going on her life and didn't want her resignation to be a surprise.

Then Covid happened, colleague was furloughed from March and even though she DID physically move back to Spain she did not resign. She remained on furlough until this month. She's now back working remotely while living in another country.

She's now saying she won't resign and is lobbying to work remotely on a permanent basis. The rest of us will have to return to the office when we are expected to return; obviously she can't because, well, she lives across an ocean. If she gets to work from home permanently and we don't, because we actually live near to where we work, that feels deeply unfair.

Surely she's having a laugh? I know you can't force someone to resign, but surely carrying on like this isn't possible? HR don't know how to deal with these new situations so I get the impression they are treading lightly, which is not helpful.

if she cant forefill her job role fully they could sack her on capability grounds.

As other PP have mentioned, there are significant implications for any employer allowing this for anything other than a short period. Yes tax implications for her too, but big tax implications for your employer (including running the risk of being seen to create a permanent establishment in the new country and being taxed as though her home is an office making income there). Depends a bit on her role within the business. Also issues of employment law (does she become entitled to Spanish employment law protection for example?).

At the beginning of lockdown we allowed people to work from overseas for a while given the circumstances, but realised it was a big mistake when lots of them refused to come back and couldn’t accept that the risk for us was way too big to allow it to carry on for most of the year. We now have a zero working overseas policy (other than in exceptional circumstances for a specifically defined period in the year) (and other than in any of our overseas offices).

Employers not getting a clear policy on this, underpinned by tax and legal advice, are setting themselves up for a nasty surprise.

Secondly, the shittier bits of this colleague's work will be redistributed to colleagues, possibly me, who will have to be forced to go in a minimum of a few days/week to do this office-based work that can't be done at home. That's not fair either. But it's what will happen.

Refuse to do it. It's not part of your contract to cover for an employee who works in Spain. If others want to do it, that's on them. But id refuse to. Its an issue for her and the business to get past. Nothing to do with you.

YABU to expect her to quit in order to solve your feeling out out. It's not her job to make life fair for everyone in the workplace.

If you are not given the same opportunities or are asked to pick up the shit in her absence, then target your ire at that ask.

It's not her fault, not her problem.

I don't think it's unreasonable if she's doing OK.

My organisation is just going through a big re-org (fortunately my role has survived) and now it looks like someone based in the US might be reassigned to our team! Yup, they're far away and we'll only be synched in the afternoon - OTOH, I think they're a good person for the job and having someone based in the US will help the wider team.

I really don't think that I'm saying this at all. I've provided reasonable reasons for why offering this to said colleague would be unfair on others.

No, you haven't.

I spoke to someone a few weeks ago and during the call it became apparent she was not in the uk. She was in the Bahamas !! Not from the Bahamas. She is still there now. Have to say she is brilliant , quick to deal with stuff and I haven’t noticed any difference at all in interacting with her.

The only problem was my extreme jealousy !!!

Refuse to do it. It's not part of your contract to cover for an employee who works in Spain. If others want to do it, that's on them. But id refuse to. Its an issue for her and the business to get past. Nothing to do with you.

It's not always that simple. One of her roles is fulfilling distribution of catalogues and print materials which sometimes she does manually - stamps on envelopes etc. When I produce these materials should I just leave them on her desk and wait for somebody, not me, to send them out even if no one is assigned. Yes, it's my manager's problem not me but often they turn a blind eye and say 'sort it out.' Since my performance is directly related to the completion of this work, it's likely to me to step in.

If your company isn’t considering everyone’s requests fairly, that sucks, but the issue is then with your company. Like all of us, she’s just trying to make her life work.

@sally067

I don't think the tax issues are the responsibility of the employer but fall upon the employee.

We had a guy work remotely in Italy for a year, we paid his salary, tax and NI as usual but he was hit with a 15,000 euro tax bill from the Italian version of HMRC, he tried to get the company to pay for it but they weren't having any of it and he had to pay it himself. I think with most European countries if you have been resident for over 180 days then you have to pay income tax there.

It did see the company change policy through and now if someone wants to work abroad for longer than 3 months they have to become a contractor.

This is not quite right. Yes it is a personal tax liability. But the employer should likely have been witholding Italian version of PAYE. A UK company won't have the ability to do that. Hence they would need to pay a local payroll beaureu and incur costs. Which is why they can't just let people go off and work on whatever country they want. If someone is tax resident in another country they will be liable to tax there, even if UK PAYE has been deducted, can't just choose where to pay tax. It's costly and complicated to file tax returns to sort it out.

I work in international tax. The personal tax issues, pension, employment rights and so on is one side of it and expensive to get right. This kind of set up is also nightmare for the employers corporation tax position, they risk creating an overseas taxable presence (something like an overseas branch office) and if its not registered with the local Spanish tax authority its likely to create problems in a few months time. Most companies are waking up to this now they have all been inundated with WFH requests and once they realise the costs they have zero tolerance unless very senior/essential to keep the person on UK payroll.

In the public sector there are very clear job descriptions attached to each role. HR will consider remote working from abroad, against the job description attached to the role. They need to be assured that the ' role can be completed now, in the future and for all employees with the same job description. Not being able to meet the job description would mean that an employee is not capable of doing the job.

This won't be about the individual but about the job description. Whatever the decision it won't be personal (about you or her).

( and yes, I too, take public sector staff through capability to dismissal ...in fact tomorrow...)

I feel for you OP. There's a guy in my office who is Greek - he spent the summer in Greece, which was fine as we were all wfh. Now we're all back, and I specifically asked could I continue to wfh, but they said no - actually no way. I have to come in. So he had to come back, but he only came back the day we started back, and so was quarantined for 14 days and like you, I had to do the 'shortfall', going in more often. He's back now. But I see what you mean - when you all want to wfh I think the company or whoever you work for will have to consider equality. Otherwise what is stopping you all moving to Spain, or whereve...

No problem at all as long as the business is able to handle the tax and other admin issues related to this move. Personally, I think it's the one positive outcome from the pandemic that businesses are suddenly learning that being chained to a desk from 9 to 5 is just not necessary.

It might seem unfair OP but I completely understand why she has made the decisions she has - unless she has dual citizenship then it is probably going to be rendered impossible for her in January anyway.
If she is Spanish and now considered ordinarily resident in Spain, Brexit won't allow her to work remotely? If she moved back to Spain in the Summer and was claiming furlough from April, there may be tax implications there too either in the receipt of said furlough or after 3 months in Spain. It's going to be a complete ball-ache for those in HR, put it that way.

Yanbu. If your colleague is allowed to work remotely and effectively offload all the shitty bits of her job on to you or other colleagues then that is totally unfair. I would also be asking why she would continue to be employed if only fulfilling a proportion of the role she is paid for.

@ilovesooty

Well as long as she doesn't work in housing and her name isn't Lucille...

Too busy down the gym to organise moving to Spain

@ProfessorSlocombe has this, as have other PPs.

For now, many an employer & employee are enjoying the immediate benefits of WFH, but this will change & ‘goodwill’ on all sides will fade as productivity & performance will change, meetings are harder to manage household bills go up & some social isolation sets in.

For permanent WFH, this is a change of contract.

@sally067

I don't think the tax issues are the responsibility of the employer but fall upon the employee.

We had a guy work remotely in Italy for a year, we paid his salary, tax and NI as usual but he was hit with a 15,000 euro tax bill from the Italian version of HMRC, he tried to get the company to pay for it but they weren't having any of it and he had to pay it himself. I think with most European countries if you have been resident for over 180 days then you have to pay income tax there.

It did see the company change policy through and now if someone wants to work abroad for longer than 3 months they have to become a contractor.

Depends completely on the situation and countries. I'm massively over-simplifying, but unless all conditions of the applicable double tax treaty (DDT), if there is one, are fulfilled then the employer can have exposure to various taxes (excluding the individuals own income tax which is separate) from day 1 of presence. 183 days refers to tax residency which relates to personal income taxes, not corporate taxes. Degree of exposure will vary country to country ( including within the EU - anyone who believes there are no ''borders'' is mistaken).

These risks are separate to any personal income tax & NIC the employee is liable to pay. If all DDT conditions are fulfilled then the individual would have usually been able to claim a tax credit based on taxes paid in the UK for the same period. If an A1 was in place would be exempt from social security..

@hemhem

I work in international tax. The personal tax issues, pension, employment rights and so on is one side of it and expensive to get right. This kind of set up is also nightmare for the employers corporation tax position, they risk creating an overseas taxable presence (something like an overseas branch office) and if its not registered with the local Spanish tax authority its likely to create problems in a few months time. Most companies are waking up to this now they have all been inundated with WFH requests and once they realise the costs they have zero tolerance unless very senior/essential to keep the person on UK payroll.

I work in the same sector, and completely agree with you.

Permanent establishment exposure has become a much bigger issue owing to Covid. Once companies clock on to the risk and cost (many don't and pay the price) they usually take a zero tolerance.

This has been a nightmare to manage & huge expense.

Yes - if an A1 in place she would be exempt from paying social security in Spain but she would have to apply for an A1 and it would not be issued unless her employer confirms she's on assignment and perhaps not even then, depending on if the "assignment" seems genuine or not. Which it doesn't.

Plus the tax issues, which yes, are both personal and corporate.

There have been some irresponsible articles in the media about this sort of thing; I saw one in the Guardian - but certainly employers need to not sleepwalk into a non compliant situation.

Ps I work in this sector also

@ProfessorSlocombe has this, as have other PPs.

Not exactly. Other PPs have zoomed in on tax issues and pretty much ignored the wider - and potentially more serious implications. It appears from the OPs description that their employer is doing this "on the cheap" and I would be concerned that suddenly there's a slew of similarly minded companies (i.e ones that think only losers pay for professional advice) that decide they've just discovered a completely unknown way to do business. They haven't, and if they don't get shit hot top notch advice, they could end up in extremely serious trouble. Everyone has focused on the employees tax tribulations and not really thought that if HMRC suddenly decide this is a wheeze to get out of any UK tax liabilities there could be a nasty backdated pay-now tax demand.

It's not always that simple. One of her roles is fulfilling distribution of catalogues and print materials which sometimes she does manually - stamps on envelopes etc. When I produce these materials should I just leave them on her desk and wait for somebody, not me, to send them out even if no one is assigned. Yes, it's my manager's problem not me but often they turn a blind eye and say 'sort it out.' Since my performance is directly related to the completion of this work, it's likely to me to step in.

Keep handing it to the manager and say you're too busy to deal with it. It's their problem, not yours. What are they going to do, fire you for not doing someone else's job? Either they pay you more and add it to your contract, or they tell her to come back, or they fire her. Their choice. But you can just say no, it's not your job.

The agreement she comes to with the management has nothing to do with you.

If however you are asked to do additional tasks that you are not happy to do as she can no longer do it then you could have a conversation about that.

You just seem cross though that she is living abroad but working in the U.K. sounds like a great solution for here and not sure why you begrudge it so much. Jealousy?

I have a colleague who for various personal reasons had to move across the country because of lockdown. She is still there working remotely. We are all now having v to go into the office a couple of days a week as a presence is needed and so many staff are needed in each day. She She obviously isn't contributing to this rota.

I have literally no problems with this. This arrangement is between her and our employers. I am pleased tbh as it demonstrates an improved view of flexible working. Which is positive for all employees.

In the past I have benefited from arrangements as work that was preferential due to my disability.

It's just the way it rolls.

I personally would rather work for a receptive and flexible employer than a rigid and inflexible employer.

You should be pleased. If you ever need flexibility you are much more inclined to get it.