
Ask HN: Folks who work remotely for US companies, how do you handle money? - thro1237
I know there are many people here who work for US companies from outside the US. Do you guys primarily work as contractors? If you are regular employees, do you get a US W-2? If you are not a US Citizen, I guess you will be treated as a non-resident for tax purposes? Is that favorable to you? Let us discuss these financial aspects here.
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bckygldstn
When I did this as a contractor I gave my employer a W8-BEN form, which
affirms you are a non-resident from a country with a tax treaty with the US.
Then I was paid my full rate by my US employer (no tax withheld), and I paid
tax at the end of the year in my own country at the self-employed rate.

I believe this will differ greatly based on how your company prefers likes to
handle things, how your government likes to tax things, and whether you set
yourself up as self-employed, contractor, employee, corp, sole tradership etc.
I'd highly recommend seeing a local accountant or similar.

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desaiguddu
We are a registered company in India.

We work as a Freelancer or Contractor with USA based companies.

We do not need to file any US Taxes or do not require a W8-BEN form.

When we work with India based clients we need to charge them GST or Local
Taxes.

We receive Client payments in terms of Remittance & need to declare payment is
against the Software Services extended to an organisation or individual
outside India.

Our taxation is handled by Charter Accountants.

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err4nt
I am a Canadian Citizen who owns my own business (registered as a Sole
Proprietorship) and I do contract work and consulting for US clients
sometimes.

I am living outside the US as well so thankfully I don't have US tax, the
biggest difference for me is that I don't need to charge US clients sales tax
where I live, but for local clients I do need to collect an additional tax and
pass that on to the government.

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rubayeet
I am in a similar situation (Canadian PR working for a US company as a
'consultant'). How do you calculate CPP (Canadian Pension Plan) tax?

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carlsborg
I am not a lawyer. My understanding is: non-citizens non-residents are
contractors and the work is carried out outside of the US so it is "non US
sourced". If any of the three above conditions are not true, then the US based
company must withhold taxes. The contractor must submit the correct WBEN forms
to the US co, to declare this.

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itamarst
My impression is that if you are an employee, you are typically hired by local
company in country you live. This local company will be structured as a
subsidiary of the US corporation. So US taxes are irrelevant.

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briandear
That's completely not the case much of the time. Frequently, non-US-citizen
remote people are hired as contractors rather than permenant employees.
Otherwise, it gets ridiculous -- I hire a Serbian guy and a Ukrainian guy and
a French guy -- that would, under your scenario, require 3 different
subsidiaries and all of the bureaucratic nonsense that would entail -- opening
a French subsidiary, for exsample would be next to hell in terms of trouble --
especially for an American company with no physical presence in the country.
No way. Most companies would never do it that way.

The best and easiest way is to simply hire the "employee" as a
consultant/contractor -- then that person can handle taxes/etc however they
need to. For example, what if you're a Serbian citizen working remotely from
Thailand for a US company while getting paid into an EU bank account?

It gets ridiculous in a hurry -- unless you're paying remote overseas
employees as independent contractors.

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itamarst
That's why I said "if you are hired as an employee". Choices are contractor or
local employee, you're never a US employee.

