The biggest issues relating to expatriate (records relating to relocation of 
employees from their home country to a host country) and inpatriate (relocation 
records held in the host country of employees from other countries) records are 
related to taxes. Next up will be immigration and work permit issues. In 
addition, there are contractual issues with the employee and third parties 
engaged in the process of relocation. Generally, the applicable retention period 
starts with the end of the assignment. For some employees, they may be under one 
relocation agreement or another for a considerable part of their career. If each 
assignment is covered by a separate agreement that does not amend prior 
agreements, each assignment could be retained separately.

These records may include contracts for the sale of real property, so if a 
company is liable for taxes from such sale, this will need to be taken into 
consideration.

Generally, the longest retention period will relate to contracts, so a typical 
retention period would be ten years after termination of the contract. However, 
if the transaction involved the acquisition or disposition of a company asset 
(say property or a vehicle), you should look to the applicable tax laws. There 
are often records of payments to third parties (or the employee) in the files, 
so those records may be governed under standard accounting retention periods. 
Immigration records and work permits will vary from country to country and are 
generally the most critical of inpatriate records.

The employee's contract is often very critical as it will contain clauses 
dealing with repatriation in the event that the employee is dismissed or laid 
off. In addition, an employee may have some liability to reimburse the employer 
for relocation costs should the employee voluntarily resign.

It's my experience that these records are generally maintained separately from 
the master personnel file because they relate to a specialized process and often 
need to be referenced several times during the assignment in order to update 
work permits and so forth. 


 Patrick Cunningham, CRM, FAI
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