[pimterry]

I've worked in a ~50 person distributed company - the practical contracting steps weren't a big issue.

You pay everybody outside your local jurisdiction as contractors, and you pass on the significant savings to them as salary, so they can approximate the normal employee benefits purchased directly for themselves. I understand this is a bit more complicated in the US as health insurance is a key benefit, but not impossible, and that's not a problem in most of the rest of the world.

Employees do need to register locally as freelancers, file invoices & do taxes, but that's a relatively simple process for such cases everywhere I'm aware of, and any costs can be included in the salary bump. We made it work with no big problems or complaints for anybody in the 2 years I was there.

[ghaff]

I don't know all the details but even having distributed employees as W-2 workers with full benefits can't be that hard. I worked for a 10 person company with employees in a few different states plus the UK and they were able to make it work.

[redisman]

See but that’s not that great for the employee. Making them do accounting and “breaking” tax law on pretending to be independent contractors.

https://gosmallbiz.com/the-independent-contractor-checklist/