We have an Italian national currently working for one of our group companies. In the pandemic she has been working form home, as have all our employees, and during this time she headed back to Italy so that she was close to her family. It now appears that she is wanting to remain in Italy for the long term, which we do not have a specific issue with - however this does complicate the nature of the contractual and tax relationship. Has anyone else experienced something similar, or know of how best to approach this especially with January1st 2021 approaching!?

In reply to Cj Harrison:

Hi CJ. The tax year in Italy ends in December. If your employee spends more than 183 days of a tax year as a tax resident in their home country, they will be liable for income taxes in Italy and not the UK. Taxes in Italy are higher than UK. So your decision is to terminate the contract as she wants to work outside the UK and not return to her workplace, or to employ her on an Italian contract as a home worker in the long term. Brexit is not relevant here.

Hi, I have a question in regards to personal data. My workplace is conducting weekly covid checks due to the nature of the work. During the testing process employees have their address, date of birth and mobile number checked by the admin person (they read it out loud and ask you to confirm). However, due to the weather they have now allowed a few people to wait in the same room. Their is a privacy screen to stop the person being tested being seen by colleagues, however they are not sound proof and you can hear personal data being shared. What are peoples thoughts on this in relation to GDPR, confidentiality etc?

In reply to Robyn:

This isn't a secure way to discuss sensitive or ordinary personal data, and so a different method should be used with a simple risk assessment to identify the issue and find a resolution (this is required under GDPR when processing special category data). GP surgeries have been fined for similar breaches in the past, so there are already lessons to be learned on this pre-GDPR.