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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

You can't legally hire someone else not currently in the US or at least has a US-work permit and thus can be legally hired in the US and made a resident in some state. It used to be that the law turned a blind eye about this but now that's not the case.

You can Deel these employees but you can only transfer money abroad long enough till you realize that the only way to do it fully legally is to create a foreign entity in the foreign country and hire the employee through it. Might work for a particular and unique talent but it doesn't scale.

The US system is now hostile for "globally" distributed teams.

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I 'work' remotely for a US company from abroad regularly. I have no connection to the US.

I own a corporation and it is a B2B outsourcing arrangement rather than an employee though.

I don't get the same rights as an employee, but am fine with that as they are paying me and I am voluntarily providing the work.

I am surprised more people don't try that arrangement as I have seen nothing to suggest there are problems with it so far. I just needed to get an EIN, file 8832 as I have a single member foreign corporation then fill in a W-8BEN-E and protectively file 1120-F and 8833 every year.

While this is flying under the radar, this is not legal in pretty much all jurisdictions. You are an employee and using a company to contract services. It is not legal even if you were both based in the same country.

Not quite. Disguised employment is a pretty specific and (usually) clear-cut issue with well defined criteria. The problems start when a jurisdiction broadens the definition to include whatever they want because they want to capture more tax revenue.

IANAL, but I've been freelancing for years and had a similar thing come up. In the end I was found compliant with the law, ie: not in disguised employment.

I am not technically an employee - I get given a project and agree to complete milestones for payment. I supply my own tools and take on any risks that it won't be delivered or stuff will break. I carry my own insurance. I could hire other people to do the work if they passed my client's background check requirements and signed the NDAs.

I have a few different clients who I do work for and actively market my services.

They’re hired through outsourcing firms. The company pays the outsourcing firm as a subcontractor. It’s quite common, even amongst the Silicon Valley startups I work with.

My experience is that outsourcing has only accelerated since Covid made remote work commonplace. It never used to be a thing amongst trendy startups.

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