Tax, VAT & Visas: What Connected Tech Ecosystems Can Do

In 2016, I heard of an experienced sales director running his company’s South African operations while traveling back and forth from that country and his home base in the U.K. After planning what had become a routine trip to visit the company’s people in South Africa, it suddenly dawned on him that he had hit his limit of days in the country for the year. If he stepped foot in the country again, he and his company would face local tax implications.

It’s not just for business travel that visitation limits can cause problems. I’ve also heard of colleagues booking family holidays to countries they’ve visited that same year for work, only to be turned away at the gate for overstaying their welcome. At that point, the travellers had to decide whether to cancel their trips or watch their families go on without them.

In my recent article for Business Travel News, I discuss what a connected tech ecosystem can do to help facilitate a smoother running of a business travel programme’s details. This includes:

• How visas are one of the essential details that need to be correct for successful business travel programme’s and how, owing to geopolitics, are becoming increasingly complex to track.
• Why the ecosystem of a technology provider and its connectivity can be of huge value to clients, particularly if data from bookings can populate apps to track visa limits, duty of care requirements and budget track.
• How there is an opportunity for integrated technology to handle VAT reclamation by completely automating the process. Manually tracking pertinent financial information is a tough ask and 4 percent of global travel spend that can be reclaimed is not – a figure that reaches billions of pounds annually.

It’s an exciting time to be working in this space, as technology is fast levelling the playing field. Hosted, cloud-based solutions mean sophisticated technologies that previously would have been available only to sizable enterprises now can be accessed by all.

There is often an assumption that the details will look after themselves. However, they more often than not, won’t but a connected ecosystem can look after them for you.