[jobvandervoort]

If you hire someone in another country, you (employer) must fully comply with local labor laws, tax requirements, run payroll and pay any local dues in local currency.

This is only solved by either setting up a local office and hire local experts yourself, or working with an employer of record.

Source: I'm the CEO of Remote.com and we do this for other companies across the world, and run all our own entities and compliance.

[periheli0n]

Thanks for the answer and stating your background ;)

I see how this is true in general, but aren’t there special cases e.g. within the EU, between the EU and the UK, or when an employee moves country while still being employed, where simpler solutions may exist?

[jobvandervoort]

Generally: no.

There are cases and/or ways where you can e.g. hire someone under a local contract without owning a local entity, but that doesn't scale much beyond that, and you'd still need to run local payroll somehow, and be locally compliant.

The one big thing the EU solves is mobility: any EU citizen can work freely from anywhere else in the EU. That's a massive hurdle to cross otherwise.

Beyond that, even between EU countries there are absolutely massive differences in labor laws, standards, etc.

[periheli0n]

Ok. But when working through a EoR, will the employee be employed by the EoR or the company for which the work is done?

And how is the situation when the employees come in from time to time (commuting across borders) but work the majority of their time in another country?

[jobvandervoort]

The employee would be employed by the EoR on paper. Hence employer _of record_. But otherwise acts as a normal employee of the actual employer.

> And how is the situation when the employees come in from time to time (commuting across borders) but work the majority of their time in another country?

This is a gross simplification, but: You must comply with where you spend the majority of your time. Spending a few days/weeks outside of your homebase is normal (see: all business travel) and doesn't make you immediately liable.

That said, this gets really complex and murky when you think about e.g. nomads or people that really split their time between countries.

[periheli0n]

OK, thanks! That's really interesting and helpful. By the way, I'm sure you are aware, there's a ton of universities in the UK who right now have exactly this problem: Lecturers/professors/researchers living somewhere in the EU and commuting in for a few days per week during the semester. Their HR departments are freaking out because of it. They could use some help and maybe a special deal :wink: :wink:

[ghaff]

For that matter, I'm not sure how well nomadism AFAICT is really handled within the US. Systems are not really setup for people to not have permanent addresses with respect to things that require them (drivers licenses, passports, W-2s, state taxes, etc.). Pre-pandemic I spent literally months away from home but I had a clear permanent address.

[em-bee]

if i am in the european union, and i work for a company outside of europe, isn't all that my own responsibility? i pay taxes, insurance, retirement funds out of my own pocket, and i just need to factor that into what i am getting paid.

the only complication is that i have to figure out myself what and how to pay.