OrbitRemit works well for the countries they support, they also periodically throw in free transfers if you use them regularly enough.
Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
51–60 of 62 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#52Been remote for a year and a half and I've taken payments in several forms including bitcoin. My preferred method when getting paid by European companies is transferwise since they let me get paid in euros and convert them to usd or whatever local currency of where I am residing. In a Pinch, I'll use paypal but its far from ideal.
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#53Thanks for posting this as I'm anticipating to be going down the same journey as well. I'm surprised that there isn't already some sort of service that handles this although it does sound like quite an administrative entanglement. Off topic: Do you get requests around embedding AI/NLP in your chat program?
> Off topic: Do you get requests around embedding AI/NLP in your chat program? Occasionally, but not too often. Thing is, relatively few of our customers use TalkJS for customer support - the usual suspects (Intercom, Zendesk, etc) are usually better than TalkJS for those use cases. Turns out most services that need the flexibility that TalkJS offers (eg for user-to-user chat instead of user-to-helpdesk chat) need it…
I run an AI enablement company. Basically, what we do is make it easy for startups to embed AI in their apps. We can also do the actual development of the AI solution as well. Chat programs are an area of interest for us and in general, I am just curious by what people make/think about AI and how they perceive it can solve their problems.
The detection of contact information is an interesting one although would not be able to solve this by just pinging the Google Maps API and then if it shows up, assume that it's an actual address at which you can discard it?
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#54One of my startup ideas is to start a service that makes it easy to hire full-time remote employees (not contractors) and we handle all the paperwork/hassle. Anyone interested?
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This works if you have a person(s) for a period of time. But, the longer they work for you 100% of the time, and the more team members you have in a jurisdiction the more likely the team members are to be considered employees and that you have established a business in the jurisdiction. At least in the UK the separate company and 'invoice' rule is important, but there are a number of other questions used to determine…
how can a remote country force me to open a local business entity? i am not there, so they can't get me. they can only get my contractors which would hurt them, not me. (the worst is i could loose them, and they'd be out of work) the remote country would have to have an agreement with my country to be able to force me to change anything. (the european union counts as one country here, so i am asking about the case wh…
Well it depends on whether doing things the legally correct way is important or not to you?
For a small team it's unlikely as the cost of enforcement outweighs the benefit. But as you grow the amounts become more significant and there are plenty of impacts of not doing things properly. Here are way this could impact a business:
* The business won't be able to legally carry out business (e.g. sales) in the jurisdiction because there'll be an outstanding court judgement or tax judgement against you.
* The business' auditors or professional company directors may either (a) ask you to keep money on your balance sheet to account for the outstanding judgement, (b) or refuse to sign-off your accounts.
If you refuse to tell them about the outstanding fines/judgement then you will be taken to have lied to them at which point you may be struck off as a company director. It's extremely difficult to find a professional finance professional to work for a business where ethical and reporting standards are not followed because they will risk being censured and losing their livelihood.
* You won't be able to travel to the jurisdiction (if you are a director/owner of the business) as you'll risk being put in jail/civil fine.
* The state in question can use international tax treatments and bring a court case or enforcement against the company within their main jurisdiction. Unlikely for a small company.
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#561. Individual service companies / Sole proprietorship One thing to be aware of is that in many European companies a person who works for you full-time is considered to be an 'employee' even if they come in through an individual service company. In particular if they have no other active 'customers'. The more you treat people as 'employees' the more at risk you are: if you give them holidays, if you monitor their work…
Thanks a lot ! This is an extremely insightful comment. I'm confused it isn't higher up the page.
No worries. I dealt with this (with a bunch of fantastic professional legal/hr/finance people) to handle about 40 jurisdictions. I appreciate how NOT fun it is :-)
Oh and I find it so odd that none of the famous "remote first" bloggers/talkers address these operational issues.
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Off topic: Do you get requests around embedding AI/NLP in your chat program? Occasionally, but not too often. Thing is, relatively few of our customers use TalkJS for customer support - the usual suspects (Intercom, Zendesk, etc) are usually better than TalkJS for those use cases. Turns out most services that need the flexibility that TalkJS offers (eg for user-to-user chat instead of user-to-helpdesk chat) need it…
I run an AI enablement company. Basically, what we do is make it easy for startups to embed AI in their apps. We can also do the actual development of the AI solution as well. Chat programs are an area of interest for us and in general, I am just curious by what people make/think about AI and how they perceive it can solve their problems. The detection of contact information is an interesting one although would not b…
The problem is when people share stuff like "sure, just drop by our office on one infinite loop in cupertino". I'd have no idea how and when and what to pass to Google Maps to get an idea of which part, if any, of that message to suppress.
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#58One of my startup ideas is to start a service that makes it easy to hire full-time remote employees (not contractors) and we handle all the paperwork/hassle. Anyone interested?
That would just be an outstaffing firm.
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#59What’s the best solution if you’re a CEO but work in a different country to where your company is founded? Will the contractor model still work? N:B I’ve created a company in the UK but I’m thinking of moving to Denmark.
I'm the director of a UK company, now resident in Denmark.
Unfortunately by moving to Denmark the company is viewed as having an office here.
I therefore work for and get paid from an ApS (Danish limited company) which is wholly owned by the UK Ltd.
This is called a 'datterselskab' in Danish. Look at Danløn for payroll.
Re: Ask HN: How do you pay remote employees in different countries?
#60I've participated in similar setups before. Everyone was self-employed, working as a contractor, invoicing the German company. As we were all in the EU, this was pretty smooth. Why would you need to start a mailbox firm in every country with employees?
There are two problems, employment taxes/benefits and employment rights. Lets say you have a German company and you have people working across Europe. For the sake of argument lets say that you have 15 people in France. Let say that all the people work for you 100% of the time, so they are effectively employees. On the employment taxes/benefits front how are you paying the French state those 14 peoples payroll tax, a…
The 15 people in France are self-employed. They pay their own taxes to the French state, they pay their own social and health insurance. It's very simple.
Wrt jurisdiction, usually the employer's jurisdiction. You don't follow "employment law", you follow "international business" law or some such, because that's what it is.