Introduction
When employees work in multiple countries during their equity vesting period, you need to track where they worked and for how long to determine tax obligations in each location. Ledgy's Global Mobility feature helps you manage work location history and generate reports showing how equity vests across different countries.
This article explains what global mobility is, how to add work locations for stakeholders, and how to generate global mobility reports for tax purposes.
Who can use Global Mobility: You need to be an account admin in Ledgy to manage work locations and access global mobility reports.
What is global tax mobility?
Global tax mobility is the practice of tracking taxes owed across multiple countries when employees reside in different locations during their equity vesting schedule.
Why it matters: When an employee moves between countries while equity is vesting, each country may have tax rights to a portion of that equity based on the time spent working there. Companies need to track these work locations to:
Calculate tax obligations in each country
Report equity compensation correctly for tax purposes
Provide employees with accurate tax documentation
Comply with international tax regulations
Example: An employee receives a 4-year vesting grant while working in the UK. After 2 years, they relocate to Germany for the remaining vesting period. You need to track that 50% of the grant vested while in the UK and 50% vested while in Germany for proper tax reporting.
Ledgy offers 2 types of global mobility reports:
Work Locations Report
Tracks where your stakeholders have worked over time, which is crucial for equity taxation in multiple jurisdictions. It shows work location histories and durations. You can use this report to;
Track where employees with equity have worked
Calculate tax obligations in different jurisdictions
Prepare documentation for tax authorities
Plan for potential tax implications of employee relocations
Generate supporting documentation for tax filings
Vesting Tranches Report
Shows how vesting events are distributed across different tax jurisdictions based on where stakeholders have worked during the vesting period. You can use this report to;
Identify which portions of vesting equity are taxable in which jurisdictions
Calculate tax withholding requirements across multiple countries
Prepare regulatory filings for equity compensation in different locations
Support stakeholders in understanding their multi-jurisdiction tax obligations
Document compliance with international equity taxation requirements
Stakeholder work locations
On the “Stakeholders page”, one can manage work locations for stakeholders.
Currently, there are two options for adding stakeholder work locations:
Add work locations for individual stakeholders
Create or edit existing stakeholder
Navigate and expand the “Location history” section
Add effective work location start dates for relevant countries
Add work locations using stakeholder bulk edit in Excel
Click the “Bulk” edit button
In the bulk edit card, select the “Work location” Excel export template
Click “Download work location file”
In the exported Excel sheet, the following actions are supported:
Adding a single work location
For a given stakeholder row, add the effective work location date and country code
Adding multiple work locations
Duplicate the given stakeholder row and add the effective work location date and country code
Edit
Update existing values
Remove
Remove a row that contains populated work location fields
Once all changes have been applied, upload the relevant Excel file within the bulk edit card
Global mobility reports
Once stakeholder work locations have been added, one can view and export Ledgy’s global mobility reports.
Currently, we support three pre-configured reports relevant for global mobility reporting:
Reports the location history grouped by stakeholder
Reports for each grant, all vesting tranches and corresponding work location history overlap where each vesting tranche period is based on its tranche start date
Stakeholder work locations
Navigate to Reporting > Operational > Global mobility: Work locations
The report shows the full location history of all stakeholders that have work location added in Ledgy
Highlights:
Country
Location start
Location end
Location days
Location percentage
Vesting tranches
Navigate to Reporting > Operational > Global mobility: Vesting tranches
The reports shows the overlap of each vesting trance for a given grant to the stakeholder’s registered work locations.
Only vesting trances that overlap with a work location are reported in the grid
Each work location period is defined as the “Location start date” until and not including the next “Location start date”
“Location end date” is the date before the next “Location start date”
Each vesting tranche period is defined as the “Tranche start date” until and not including “Tranche vest date”
Highlights
Location days (overlapping the corresponding vesting tranche period)
Location % (overlapping the corresponding vesting tranche period)
Ratio = Location days / Total vesting period days
Vested per location
Vested per location = Tranche amount * (Location days / Vesting tranche days)