Foreign-owned U.S. employers
A foreign-owned employer’s Pennsylvania payroll map
Start with the employee’s U.S. home and work addresses. The country that ultimately owns a business and the place where its employees work answer different questions.
Use international ownership statistics for context, then move from the state to the county and exact address. This guide does not offer foreign-country payroll services or calculate withholding.
Read ownership and work location separately
Who ultimately owns the affiliate?
BEA defines a majority-owned U.S. affiliate as one whose combined ownership by all foreign parents exceeds 50%. The ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) is the person or entity reached by following majority-ownership links, starting with the foreign parent, until no other person or entity owns more than 50% of it.
The UBO may be an entity and may be in the United States. Its country can differ from the immediate foreign parent’s country.
Where do the employees work?
The state dimension locates employment at those U.S. affiliates. It does not identify workers’ nationality, citizenship, immigration status or tax residence.
Neither dimension supplies a payroll tax rate or identifies an individual employer. For a local payroll check, continue with the actual home and work addresses.
A dated view of Pennsylvania and Ohio employment
BEA’s preliminary 2024 statistics report 349.0 thousand employees in Pennsylvania and 322.4 thousand in Ohio at majority-owned U.S. affiliates, including banks, across all UBO-country categories.
These are historical, rounded employment estimates for affiliate fiscal years ending in calendar year 2024. They were released and consulted . They are not current hiring counts.
| Country of UBO | Pennsylvania · thousands | Ohio · thousands |
|---|---|---|
| Canada | 35.6 | 30.5 |
| France | 31.4 | 22.6 |
| Germany | 43.1 | 35.0 |
| Netherlands | 49.3 | 11.8 |
| Switzerland | 15.7 | 16.7 |
| United Kingdom | 57.3 | 37.3 |
| Japan | 22.3 | 81.8 |
Source: BEA, Employment of Majority-Owned U.S. Affiliates, State by Country of UBO, 2024 worksheet, cross-checked against Table II.G8. Published precision is 0.1 thousand, equivalent to 100 employees. Multiplying by 1,000 does not produce an exact headcount.
A group with a UBO in Japan or the United Kingdom can have employment in either state or both. These aggregate counts do not establish that any particular group has employees there. The table helps an international team understand the two dimensions before choosing the local sources to check.
Follow Pennsylvania → Chester → Atglen
Fictional example. A U.S. affiliate has a UBO in the United Kingdom and one employee whose home and work locations are in Atglen Borough. This is a navigation example, not a business identified by BEA. The 57.3-thousand Pennsylvania estimate for UK UBOs is population context, not this affiliate’s headcount.
1 · State
Use the actual U.S. work state
Record Pennsylvania for this employee. A UK UBO does not turn Pennsylvania work into a foreign-country payroll result. Start with the Pennsylvania state guide for the state-level checks.
2 · County
Distinguish Chester County from the municipality
The Chester County directory contains 73 municipalities in the existing reference. A county or mailing city does not assign one tax rate to every address within it.
3 · Municipality
Read the labelled Atglen fields
The archived reference used by Atglen Borough’s page lists:
- Resident EIT
- 1%
- Non-resident EIT
- 0%
- Annual LST · U.S. dollars
- US$0
- Principal PSD code · identifier
- 361301
Rates are labelled , with a site-declared capture of and an official report archived . These dates do not certify current rates. This row does not calculate the example employee’s withholding.
4 · Exact addresses and whole-file review
Confirm both home and work locations
Check both full addresses and the applicable school district in the official DCED address lookup. The county directory and principal PSD are starting points. If the search cannot resolve a location, follow DCED’s guidance and confirm with the appropriate local authority.
For a roster, use the existing PA payroll CSV review: reconcile every expected row, separate home and work addresses, and retain unresolved items. This walkthrough does not produce a withholding result.
For employment physically in Ohio, begin with the Ohio municipality directory and the relevant local source. The Pennsylvania CSV workflow does not establish an Ohio withholding result.
Keep the coverage limits with the numbers
- Seven named countries at state level. Other countries are grouped into regions or residual categories. The table cannot supply an individual India-by-Pennsylvania or China-by-Ohio count. National country shares must not be used to invent those intersections. Countries and their regional parent totals overlap.
- Different work-location rows. The source has 55 rows: 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Other U.S. areas, Foreign and the table total. Foreign means employees of U.S. affiliates working abroad for more than one year. The table total is not the sum of only the 50 states and DC.
- Rounded values, ranges and suppression. Published detail may not add to totals because of rounding. BEA’s
(*)means more than zero and fewer than 50 employees. Letter codes represent published size ranges, not zero or point estimates. Preserve ranges and suppressed values; do not fill them with midpoints or reconstruct them by subtraction. BEA also permits suppression when needed under its disclosure policy. - A changing historical series. The download spans 2007–2024. The older worldwide Other bucket in 2007–2011 differs from the residual outside Canada, Europe, and Asia and Pacific used from 2012. They are not one continuous Other series. The July 2026 release marks 2024 preliminary and revises 2023; later releases can change historical data.
- Separate periods and units. Fiscal-year 2024 employment, dated DCED percentages, annual LST dollars and PSD identifiers answer different questions. They are linked as a workflow, not combined into a tax estimate or a general promise of worldwide payroll coverage.
Review BEA statistics after its next annual release. Confirm current address-specific information with DCED whenever preparing payroll.
BEA sources consulted November 2, 2026. The local walkthrough uses the dated DCED reference described above. It is our navigation example; BEA does not allocate these state totals to Chester or Atglen.