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I have a friend who's physically in the UK and works for a US company. I was interviewing for a remote job in the UK while being physically in France. In both

I have a friend who's physically in the UK and works for a US company. I was interviewing for a remote job in the UK while being physically in France. In both situations, the setup is a local company (possibly self-owned) that bills the actual company. So you're not UsCorp's employee, you're an YourOwnCorp employee, and UsCorp is YourOwnCorp's client. This way, all taxes and related issues are handled locally. Sure, there's overhead, but from what I've seen it's worth it.

lm28469 4y ago
How do you deal with health insurance, pension, unemployment benefits, &c. ? Sounds like a massive headache
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  It isn't, really. Sure, there is some paperwork to set everything up. But once that's done (and you can pay someone to do it for you), it's pretty much smooth sailing. The biggest "hassle" is closing the accounts for the year and sending them to the Administration, and those have to be signed off by an actual accountant. But this takes like 1 hour per year, it's not that bad. Regarding health insurance, etc you can either get your own, private one or have it bought by the company. It's the same thing if you're a full-on employee: if you're not happy with the coverage the employer has, you can get your own on top of it. When you're your own boss, you can choose what you want straight away. All this may vary depending on the type of company you set up (there's no such thing as "freelance" as far as the law is concerned). This will also have an effect on pension – if you only pay yourself in dividends, there's no pension. Sure, there are a few things to be taken care of, but if you invest a few days and do your research, it's a good tradeoff. The other approach, as siblings said, is to use some kind of "shell company" that does this for you. But from what I've seen, their cut is ridiculous, so it's absolutely not worth it. NB: this comes from France, but I expect the situation to be roughly similar in other countries.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TuringNYC 4y ago
  >> How do you deal with health insurance, pension, unemployment benefits, &c. ? You have to ensure the rate includes a premium to pay all those costs. Otherwise it isnt worth doing.
- rodrigodlu 4y ago
  I have my own solo company, I send an invoice with my company details and my company's bank account number. that's it. Then the company you own pays all these things. Not the company that hired my own company. It's more a B2B relationship than employee mentality. I hired another startup to do all my accounting since it's really simple. I keep some cash inside my company to pay taxes and so on. In my jurisdiction it's even cheaper the tax you pay as company than as an individual. I have some sort of salary because my local legislation demands, but most is taken as dividends. The spare money due to reduced costs I can also afford extra private "unemployment" insurance. One that covers two months, not even counting my personal emergency reserve. So yes, you need to stop living by paycheck even if it means buying less stuff on Amazon.com.
tomduncalf 4y ago
In the UK we have IR35 and AFAIK in other countries there are similar laws in place to prevent people working as contractors for their own limited company when they "should" be an employee (determined by various factors), and as far as I know it applies regardless of whether both entities are in the same country or not. Of course, you can be careful with contracts and working conditions etc. to try to avoid this, but it's definitely not trivial and something of a grey area.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  According to [0], this seems concerned with "taxation fairness"; basically making sure you don't take advantage of some possible lower tax rates (I suppose, I don't live in the UK) levied on companies instead of workers. It's my understanding that, basically, if you're an "outsourced employee", you have to pay the same things as if you were an actual employee: so salary, income tax, whatever else HMRC requires, rather than milking the dividends... It doesn't seem to me that the actual setup is illegal. [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-working-ir35 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-workin... --- edit: In France, I'm not aware of a similar law in regard to taxation. However, there's a "worker protection" law that says that if you're only working for a client, you are subordinate to them, and basically the only difference between an actual employee and you is that you're outsourced, you can then sue the company to be "promoted" to an internal employee, and you're basically guaranteed to win.

lm28469 4y ago

How do you deal with health insurance, pension, unemployment benefits, &c. ? Sounds like a massive headache

vladvasiliu 4y ago
It isn't, really. Sure, there is some paperwork to set everything up. But once that's done (and you can pay someone to do it for you), it's pretty much smooth sailing. The biggest "hassle" is closing the accounts for the year and sending them to the Administration, and those have to be signed off by an actual accountant. But this takes like 1 hour per year, it's not that bad. Regarding health insurance, etc you can either get your own, private one or have it bought by the company. It's the same thing if you're a full-on employee: if you're not happy with the coverage the employer has, you can get your own on top of it. When you're your own boss, you can choose what you want straight away. All this may vary depending on the type of company you set up (there's no such thing as "freelance" as far as the law is concerned). This will also have an effect on pension – if you only pay yourself in dividends, there's no pension. Sure, there are a few things to be taken care of, but if you invest a few days and do your research, it's a good tradeoff. The other approach, as siblings said, is to use some kind of "shell company" that does this for you. But from what I've seen, their cut is ridiculous, so it's absolutely not worth it. NB: this comes from France, but I expect the situation to be roughly similar in other countries.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TuringNYC 4y ago
>> How do you deal with health insurance, pension, unemployment benefits, &c. ? You have to ensure the rate includes a premium to pay all those costs. Otherwise it isnt worth doing.
rodrigodlu 4y ago
I have my own solo company, I send an invoice with my company details and my company's bank account number. that's it. Then the company you own pays all these things. Not the company that hired my own company. It's more a B2B relationship than employee mentality. I hired another startup to do all my accounting since it's really simple. I keep some cash inside my company to pay taxes and so on. In my jurisdiction it's even cheaper the tax you pay as company than as an individual. I have some sort of salary because my local legislation demands, but most is taken as dividends. The spare money due to reduced costs I can also afford extra private "unemployment" insurance. One that covers two months, not even counting my personal emergency reserve. So yes, you need to stop living by paycheck even if it means buying less stuff on Amazon.com.

tomduncalf 4y ago

In the UK we have IR35 and AFAIK in other countries there are similar laws in place to prevent people working as contractors for their own limited company when they "should" be an employee (determined by various factors), and as far as I know it applies regardless of whether both entities are in the same country or not. Of course, you can be careful with contracts and working conditions etc. to try to avoid this, but it's definitely not trivial and something of a grey area.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
According to [0], this seems concerned with "taxation fairness"; basically making sure you don't take advantage of some possible lower tax rates (I suppose, I don't live in the UK) levied on companies instead of workers. It's my understanding that, basically, if you're an "outsourced employee", you have to pay the same things as if you were an actual employee: so salary, income tax, whatever else HMRC requires, rather than milking the dividends... It doesn't seem to me that the actual setup is illegal. [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-working-ir35 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-workin... --- edit: In France, I'm not aware of a similar law in regard to taxation. However, there's a "worker protection" law that says that if you're only working for a client, you are subordinate to them, and basically the only difference between an actual employee and you is that you're outsourced, you can then sue the company to be "promoted" to an internal employee, and you're basically guaranteed to win.