Can someone knowledgeable about this issue comment about legal / tax feasibility of getting a remote job with a US company and living in Canada or elsewhere abroad?
I work for an American company and live in Metro Vancouver. In fact, around half the team lives here.
We own shares in the American company and are paid through a Canadian subsidiary. That compensation scheme avoids burdening the employees with the difficulty of declaring foreign earnings come tax time.
So for the most part it's the same as working for a Canadian company, but the pay is better.
Awesome! That's like the ideal situation right there. I'm an American that moved to Canada back in 2002 and worked as a contractor for my US employer for more than 4 years. The yearly tax stuff drove me insane.
It's not so much ideal as a nice compromise. I'm still earning much less than I would with similar experience doing similar work in _Seattle_, but I get to stay in Canada and earn more than I could easily manage working for a local company.
I used to work for a US company as a remote employee (contractor). I'm a canadian citizen, so it will be different if you dont have the right to work here, but for me its pretty easy. You're basically considered self-employeed and have to declare your income. You also have to register for a GST number (you don't have to charge gst, but you do have to report charging $0. Its weird). The tax forms are easy enough you can definitely just print them out and fill out yourself, or hire a tax person to do them for you. (Disclaimer: not an accountant, hire a real one if you want real tax advice).
I have no idea how it works if your not a citizen. In general i think work visas are fairly easy to get if you are a skilled worker like a software engineer, especially coming from a NAFTA country.
Do you have any specific questions? I am a Canadian, living in Canada, working remotely for a bay area company.
Non-us based employees at the company are technically contractors where I work.
It's pretty easy come tax time. You need to pay the full cpp amount, as opposed to half if you were working for a Canadian company, and I find the tax writeoffs to be quite meager, but I don't have any complaints in general.
We own shares in the American company and are paid through a Canadian subsidiary. That compensation scheme avoids burdening the employees with the difficulty of declaring foreign earnings come tax time.
So for the most part it's the same as working for a Canadian company, but the pay is better.