
Ask HN: Legal/tax issues while hiring remote workers from outside US? - dragon_king
For those companies that have hired full time remote employees from outside of US, is there any specific legal&#x2F;tax related processes? Do they need a US Tax ID? Is the process any different if you are paying them cash + equity?
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mtmail
Opposite: You need a tax id for the country the employee is in because you pay
the employer part of their local health insurance, pension and whatever other
benefit the employee is entitled to in their country. The contract needs to be
bi-lingual (certified). All local laws like vacation days, sick days,
maternaty leave rules, which public holidays are observed need to be
respected.

Most companies don't want this extra hassle and instead make the remote person
a contractor, basically receive a single monthly bill. The contractor is
responsible to file their income tax, get health insurance etc.

An alternative is for the remote person to get employed by a local agency, who
then sends a monthly bill to the US company.

Another option is to open a subsidary. Of course hardly worth it for one
employee.

In Europe if a remote employee (let's say Greece) travels to their employer
(let's say in France) to work or have meetings they have to pay taxes in
France for those days. Not an issue if it's less than 5% of the working days
per year. If it's more than 10% the employee has to file taxes in both
countries. I've been in this situation. This is Europe, not the US, but shows
how crazy complex tax situations can become.

