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I understand the surprise given that many companies these days hire full time "employees" as "contractors" in other countries. These employees are sometimes not

I understand the surprise given that many companies these days hire full time "employees" as "contractors" in other countries. These employees are sometimes not really "contractors" (they have a fixed salary, they get benefits like paternity leave or paid time off, they have performance reviews, they can be promoted, etc.) but on paper they are "contractors". Personally I know various companies that have employees all over the world but DON'T have accountants and lawyers anywhere. These "employees" are both "contractors" and "employees", depending on which angle you look from.

slgeorge 9y ago
That's true, but the reality is that lots of small start-ups are "doing it wrong" and will be caught eventually [0]. Most jurisdictions have firm differences between a temporary worker (contractor) and an employee. Generally, companies have responsibilities to pay things like payroll taxes for employees and not for contractors. While management and team members might consider them selves BOTH employee and contractor. The legal and tax situation is that those are different employment states and you can't be both. For a recent example see Uber in the UK. It's somewhat a tech industry thing the idea that employees can wander around the world and work from wherever they want - the tax and legal system isn't quite as fluid. [0] statistically the chance of being noticed by the tax authority is pretty small at the start which is why it doesn't happen that much. But, if you start 'employing' tens of people in a jurisdiction and don't have company tax affairs in order then it gets increasingly risky.