How Do Companies Manage Mobility Compliance?

Most companies that have mobile employees track these employees and use this data when calculating tax withholding due on stock options and awards. This is especially true for globally mobile employees, but tax compliance is also high even for domestic mobility in the United States.

These trends and more are revealed in the NASPP/Deloitte Tax 2025 Equity Administration Survey. Here is a summary of the findings.

Tracking Global vs. US Domestic Mobility

A trend that is immediately apparent in the survey is that compliance is higher for globally mobile employees than it is for US domestic employees. In the global arena, nearly 90% of companies track permanent transfers and employees who have repatriated back to their home country and 85% track employees on location in formal assignment programs. The percentage of companies tracking US mobile employees drops considerably, with only 63% tracking permanent transfers and only 30% tracking employees on temporary assignments.

One reason compliance might be higher for globally mobile employees is that when employees relocate internationally, it is often at the request of their employer or through a formal program. The company might be expanding into a new region or might offer employees the opportunity to work overseas.

Because formal assignments meet a business need, they also tend to receive more support from the company, such as relocation support, immigration assistance, and even tax assistance. This more formalized process lends itself to more compliance, including with respect to the taxation of equity awards.

Another factor might simply be that, historically, global mobility has been on the radar of local tax authorities for longer than domestic mobility here in the United States. If I look back over past NASPP Conferences, we started offering sessions on global mobility before we focused on state-to-state mobility. So companies may have had a head start on their global mobility compliance.

Tracking of US Remote Workers

We first asked about compliance for hybrid/remote US workers in our 2022 survey (before the pandemic, remote work wasn’t common enough to make the cut in our survey questionnaire). In the 2025 survey, 44% of respondents track US employees with hybrid or remote working arrangements or who live and work in different states. This is up from only 38% in the 2022 survey. 

How Do Companies Know Where Employees Are?

One challenge to tracking mobile employees—whether they are global or US-based—is knowing where they are. I’ve heard stories of employees moving to entirely new continents without notifying their employer. I’ve also encountered employers who are suspicious of claims by remote workers that they have moved to US states that don’t impose income tax.

Self-reporting by employees is, by far, the most common way that companies learn of employee movements, with about 80% of companies relying on this approach for US mobility and 73% relying on it for global mobility.

Other means of tracking include travel expense reporting, reports from third-party travel providers, the company’s time reporting system, and other third-party technology, but each of these is used by less than 20% of respondents.

Although not a choice in the survey, several respondents indicate that employee movements are also sometimes reported by managers. And, of course, companies are generally aware of the locations of any employees who are part of a formal assignment program (yet another reason why compliance might be higher for these employees).

One technology that offers potential for tracking employee locations is VPN access data. Most employees have to log into a VPN for work, which could provide quantitative and readily available location data for companies. Only 4% of respondents currently rely on VPN to track employee locations, but this is up from just 1% in 2022.

For more ideas on how to track employee locations, check out the session “Practical Approaches to Mobile Employee Tracking” at this year’s NASPP Conference.

Tax Compliance for Mobile Employees With Equity Awards

Of course, keeping track of where employees are working is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mobility compliance. Companies then must use that data to inform their tax withholding and reporting processes.

The overall trend here is that once companies are tracking mobility, they are likely to use that data to calculate taxable income and withholding for all mobile employees, although, here again, compliance is more common for globally mobile employees than for US state-to-state mobility.

Permanent Transfers

Among respondents who track permanent transfers, 94% use mobility data to calculate tax withholding and reporting for permanent international transfers. Most do so for all transfers, while 12% do so only for certain employees (e.g., executives) or locations.

This is another area where US compliance lags global practices. As noted already, fewer companies track permanent transfers in the United States, and these companies are less likely to use the location data for tax calculations: only 79% of respondents use mobility data for tax withholding and reporting (typically for all transfers; only 10% limit compliance to certain employees or locations).

Temporary Assignments

Not surprisingly, compliance is highest for globally mobile employees who are part of a formal assignment program; among respondents who track formal assignees, nearly all (96%) indicate that they use mobility data for tax withholding and reporting.

Compliance for global transferees who are not part of a formal program is not far behind, with 88% using the mobility data for these employees for tax withholding/reporting.

In the United States, 86% of respondents use mobility data to withhold and report taxes for temporary assignees.

Business Travelers

Although companies are least likely to track the movements of business travelers, those that make this compliance investment are more likely to at least dabble in using the data to allocate income for equity plan transactions by jurisdiction, particularly for US travelers. Ninety-four percent of respondents who track US business travelers indicate that they use mobility data to withhold and report taxes for at least some employees in this group. Compliance is more likely to be limited to certain employees or locations than for any other category of mobile employees (27% of respondents). Only 67% of respondents indicate that they comply with income allocation rules for all US business travelers.

Companies that limit compliance to certain individuals and locations are likely identifying business travelers who might be particularly visible to state tax authorities (such as a celebrity CEO) or individuals traveling to states that are known for aggressive enforcement of nonresident taxation (such as California and New York).

Compliance practices for global business travelers are similar to US practices, with a slightly higher percentage of companies limiting compliance with income allocation rules to certain individuals or jurisdictions and slightly lower overall compliance.

Learn More

This is just a small sampling of the tax compliance data available in the 2025 Equity Administration Survey. For more highlights, check out the NASPP webinar “Equity Award Tax Withholding Trends and Best Practices.”