The Challenge
Watlow, a rapidly growing global company, faced significant tax compliance challenges due to frequent employee travel across states and countries. Manual tracking of travel-related tax exposures was inefficient and unsustainable for their lean payroll and tax teams, creating risks for both the company and its employees. Leadership recognized the need for a more efficient, automated solution to manage these growing liabilities.
The Solution
After implementing Monaeo Enterprise, Watlow was able to proactively manage multi-jurisdiction tax issues. “We have better and earlier visibility into where people travel, which makes us better off,” says Buescher. Buescher and Arnold can see the company’s travel patterns in real-time on dashboards and receive early warning alerts before tax thresholds are triggered. Automated payroll withholding Withholding pay across state borders became significantly easier after Watlow implemented Monaeo Enterprise. The solution integrates seamlessly with the company’s Infineon payroll system, automatically assigning payroll taxes to the correct states. “The automation is a major benefit,” says Arnold. “Our old process was highly manual—having something seamless is huge for us.”
Real-time allocation also means there’s no need for a yearend “catch-up,” streamlining compliance and reducing risk. This not only eases the load on Watlow’s payroll department but also saves time for employees during year-end. Employees no longer have to worry about catching up on nonresident taxes and now receive W-2s for every state in which they are required to file. An unexpected side benefit of implementing Monaeo Enterprise was enabling others at the company to see the travel patterns and the tax risks they caused. “The travel patterns were a surprise to a lot of other people on the company’s management team,” says Buescher. “Even though they’re directing a lot of that travel, I don’t think it occurred to them how much time people actually travel. It was an eyeopener.” Having hard data on the company’s travel patterns enabled the tax division to make a stronger case to other departments.
