Global Payroll Documentation Takes Many Forms

Global payroll documentation — including forms, returns, and payslips — represents the flow of key payroll information between the employer, employee, and jurisdiction, a practitioner said May 14.

Broadly, documents can either be provided to the employer by the employee, provided to the employee by the employer when required, or filed by the employer with a jurisdiction, Tim Kelsey, FCIPP, AIPA, managing director of Kelsey’s Payroll Services Ltd., said.

Kelsey said that onboarding an employee is the single biggest reason an employer will have to process and produce documents, whether to establish an employee’s identity and eligibility to work, register the employee for social insurance, and provide information to correctly calculate withholding. He also said that, particularly in Africa, newly hired employees may be working in the formal economy for the first time and will have to be registered for social insurance, even if they’re old enough to have previously worked.

For example, employees in the Philippines use the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s Form 1902, Application for Registration for Individuals Earning Purely Compensation Income, to register with the agency and receive a taxpayer identification number, Kelsey said. The form requires the employee to provide a government-issued ID if they are a resident or their passport’s information page if they are a foreigner.

Registration for an employee starting work can sometimes have strict deadlines, as with Belgium’s DIMONA registration for social insurance, which must be submitted before an employee begins to work, Kelsey said. The fine for noncompliance is three times the monthly minimum wage for each day the registration is late, he said.

Australia’s tax file number declaration is an example of a form provided by the employee and kept by the employer, and the employer can provide their own electronic form or the employee can request a paper copy from the Australian Taxation Office, Kelsey said. One of the single biggest mistakes in global payroll that can be made by an employee is when they work for multiple employers and use the declaration to claim Australia’s tax-free amount of income from more than one employer, which the ATO warns employees not to do, Kelsey said. This generally results in the employee underpaying tax, he said.

Kelsey spoke at PayrollOrg’s 2025 Payroll Congress in Kissimmee, Florida.

Kelsey used the term “tax cards” or “starter certificates” to refer to the forms employees give their employers when starting to allow withholding to be calculated correctly, like the US Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Certificate.

An example is Denmark’s tax card, which shows an employee’s allowable deductions in Danish kroner and the rate of tax to apply after withholding the 8% labor market contribution. The tax rate can vary because municipal and church taxes are also taken into account, Kelsey said.

Denmark is also a particularly outsized example of what can happen when an employee does not provide a tax card, Kelsey said, requiring a 55% withholding rate after the labor market contribution.

Employers are usually but not always required to provide payslips, Kelsey said, adding that it was best practice to always provide one. The jurisdiction often prescribes the content and design, as in France, where Kelsey described the payslip format as rigidly set by statute with little room for the employer to design their own. “A French payslip is a thing of beauty. It really is a work of art,” Kelsey said.

Employment and Leave Certificates

There’s a special class of forms and certificates given to employees when they leave a job in order to inform a new employer of their withholding or accrued leave so far in the year, to establish eligibility for unemployment benefits, or to provide details of their previous position, Kelsey said.

Germany’s holiday certificate is intended to inform the new employer about the leave accrued and taken by the employee in the year at the previous employer so that a prorated entitlement can be calculated, Kelsey said. While according to the law an employer is not required to give an employee any prorated leave if they do not produce a holiday certificate, in practice many German businesses do not check for a holiday certificate from new hires, Kelsey said.

The British Virgin Islands’ labor code requires employers to provide leaving employees with certificates describing their job duties on request, but which do not contain the reason for termination unless also requested, Kelsey said.

Barbados’s National Insurance and Social Security Service’s Form UNU3, Termination of Services/Layoff Certificate, is an example of a form an employer must provide to a terminated employee to use to apply for unemployment benefits, Kelsey said.

Malaysia’s Form TP3 is an example of a form given to a new employer that shows all payments and taxes withheld in the year to date for the employee from their previous employer to allow continuation of tax calculations, Kelsey said.

Additionally, some jurisdictions that do not require income tax withholding, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, instead have extra reporting requirements for employers, Kelsey said. In Hong Kong, employers have to file forms reporting the start and end of employment with the Inland Revenue Department as well as an annual return of wages paid to employees, he said.