4 ms·
Isn't it as simple as hiring as a contractor instead of hiring as an employee? Having contractors simply turns the situation from "we have labour laws to deal
by phantom_oracle 12y ago
Isn't it as simple as hiring as a contractor instead of hiring as an employee?
Having contractors simply turns the situation from "we have labour laws to deal with" to "this is an expense like any other", although speaking to a labour + tax attorney wouldn't hurt.
As far as your company hiring remotely goes, tell them not do it if this is their first time and everyone else is local.
They will get burned (almost always likely) diving in the deep end, so if they do plan on doing it, this is (roughly) how:
Find some obscure 50-hour task and give the contractor an opportunity to complete it (making sure it is possible to be done in 50 hours).
AFAIK, when working with "contractors", the tax-reporting burden becomes theirs.
- tptacek 12y agoIt's unlawful to hire full-time employees as contractors, and there is a somewhat elaborate test (in the sense that its results can be unpredictable when applied under duress) used by the USG to tell the two apart. This is, in fact, what several companies have done to resolve this problem for foreign workers. But there is a downside. It's a very bad idea to treat US full-time employees as 1099 contractors. This, by the way, is one of the reasons that freelancers sometimes have a hard time establishing a master agreement with Fortune 500 companies.
- phantom_oracle 12y agoThanks for this. It seems like labour laws in the US are similar to other countries in this regard. There could actually be another way around this, as the contractor could register his own LLC and work through that. I'd advise the OP (again) to consult a labour and/or tax lawyer on this.
- autarch 12y agoWe have consulted lawyers, I was just wondering how some companies are able to still hire from anywhere. I'm guessing that it's some combo of hiring non-US workers as contractors and simply biting the bullet on sales tax as needed in each US state.
- logn 12y agoCan you check if sales taxes even apply? For some types of things there is no sales tax. Also it's not the end of the world. You can use software such as https://taxcloud.net/default.aspx https://taxcloud.net/default.aspx which is compatible with numerous systems.