[mschuster91]

> As opposed to say Germany where it's close to impossible to work for a overseas company even as a citizen

That's by design of our employment laws. We are the ones whose social security system will have to pay up when the employer closes down shop or fires their remote employees over night, and we are the ones whose health system has to take care when people burn out from being overworked, so we demand that employers create a local subsidiary with people and bank accounts we can hold accountable when laws are being violated.

Oh, and we also want to make sure that people and companies pay their taxes.

[oytis]

I wouldn't say it is necessary by design, as it is not forbidden and definitely possible. It's just Germany can't handle the complexity of its bureaucracy. Every new government promises to alleviate the bureaucratic burden, but in the end only adds exceptions on top of exceptions making the burden even heavier. So for remote work setup either the worker or the employer should carry it, and it's rarely worth it.

[pjmlp]

As someone working mostly remote across DACH, it is possible, but naturally the official residence and taxes have to be here.

[mschuster91]

Well, that's what the problem is. When all you as an US startup want is to hire a single or maybe a dozen Europeans, you can either go and pay them in cash or as sole-proprietors and leave the employees to deal with the rest (as long as the US gov't gets its taxes, you're in the clear from the IRS point of view), you hire some intermediate body-shop, or you do it the proper way and pay a loooooot of money for a subsidiary.

[StopDisinfo910]

I think it makes a lot of sense personally.

You can contract with companies wherever you want as a company but you can only have an employment contract with a company based where the employment laws of your country applies.

[oytis]

It does make sense, but it also is pretty hard to work as a contractor being located in Germany. The main issue is that contractors don't by default pay pension contributions, so the pension fund hunts down those it considers "fake contractors" under a complicated and ambiguous set of rules.

[mschuster91]

> The main issue is that contractors don't by default pay pension contributions, so the pension fund hunts down those it considers "fake contractors" under a complicated and ambiguous set of rules.

It's not that complicated. The rules are relatively easy: as soon as you're embedded into the organization of the client (aka, you get laptops/desktops from them, get directed by their staff what you have to do) and/or the dominant part of your time / income is one single client, the assumption is that the client only does "contracting" to avoid the obligations (in wages, social security contributions and employee protection laws) that regular employment would bring with it.

The only issue that I have with the current regulatory framework is that the individual "sole proprietors" are held financially accountable for the social security contributions, not those who actually profit from this kind of abuse.

[StopDisinfo910]

That seems extremely backward to me. Is that specific to certain contracting status or is that the case for any kind of contracting?

People should be free to contract if they want. Obviously that means they are now acting company-like and have to pay social contribution like a company would but that should be on the contractor not on the client. That’s how things work everywhere in Europe I had to deal with contracting.

Germany really is a puzzling country.