Global Hiring Payroll Chaos
Small businesses and startups struggle with the complexity and cost of international payroll and compliance. They're juggling multiple providers, facing unexpected expenses, and feeling overwhelmed by the lack of clear solutions and pricing transparency for expanding teams abroad. The current options (PEO, EOR) often feel confusing and ill-suited for smaller organizations.
SOURCES (60)
“You do not need SF first. Get US users first and visit on short trips. If you hire across countries later use Restaff for contractor onboarding and payouts but for your case the real bottleneck is visa and distribution not payroll.”
“Are there any European based workers here? How was/is yall experience with them”
“For just one hire, an EOR is probably the easiest way to do it if the Singapore company doesn't have a Dutch entity. The only thing is Singapore has a few quirks when it comes to EORs, so don't just pick the cheapest option. RemotePeople is worth checking since they deal with international hiring and can explain what actually works while taking care of payroll and compliance. I'd still double check what's included in the pricing before signing anything.”
“0% if they don’t already have some type of structure to hire in your country and don’t look for US wages even if they do. The reason they hire outside of the country is specifically to save labor cost.”
“I read that if someone pays for your SaaS from another country, you may have to collect and pay taxes in that country, and in some cases, you might even need to register a business entity there. Any tips when starting out? submitted by /u/samurai-lens [link] [comments]”
“Not necessarily true, I live in Europe and work remotely for an American employer. It's not the easiest situation to find, but it's possible.”
“I wouldn't do work for someone who pays their workers in cash. It's unethical and when he gets auditted some day, and he will, it will be a major headache for you.”
“If you spend time in multiple European countries you'd likely face a similar issue... Countries smaller than states”
“i would like to put some key employees on a bonus system. any recommendations? i was kinda thinking 3 dollars per 1000 collected. so if we collect 125K, they would get 375 bonus. any thoughts? submitted by /u/maxell87 [link] [comments]”
“Get quotes from outside for an audit. This is not your job. Saying this as someone who’s burned their fingers in good faith on this nonsense. It costs wayyy more in time and money than you’d imagine.”
100% this. El Salvador expects pension contributions, payroll taxes etc.
“In my country it is normal/expected that travel expenses are compensated. This (to a certain amount) is tax-free. It is not mandatory, but only companies you don't want to work for don't offer it.”
Zero taxes, mostly, and a good timezone to coordinate between everyone.
“Hello, I'm an accountant from Pakistan. How can I get international clients or a job that can pay atleast $3-5k/month. I have tried LinkedIn, and different websites. I have experience, but so does 100+ other people who are reaching out to the same client and applying for the job. What's something I can do, that'll make me stand out. submitted by /u/niggi_digga [link] [comments]”
“Maybe things have changed since COVID. It wasn't more lax for tax a decade ago when I looked into it, a common joke was that you got to live in an amazing place but it was often hard to find the time to enjoy it. I think talent sourcing was much different back then and easier to attract people compared to post-COVID as well.The volume of the tax shelter funds having to get their tax returns filed in time to roll up into investor funds was enormous.”
“I’ve recently been offered a job in Spain, and the company is now asking me to apply for a Highly Qualified Work Visa. I’m a bit suspicious about the costs involved. They’ve told me that I need to pay the visa fee ( €800) myself at the consulate and that they’ll only reimburse me once the visa has been approved and I’ve started working in Spain. They also want me to pay for getting all my documents apostilled and officially verified (around another €200), but they haven’t confirmed whether they’”
“I worked in accounting at a SaaS startup with a large number of remote developers. Two issues came up repeatedly. First, people would relocate without informing us. It wasn’t that we were being nosy, but their location could have tax and compliance implications for us as the employer. Second, a few people were found to be working two full-time jobs at the same time. From what I heard from our CTO, underperformance was also a broader issue among the developers. I know it’s almost sacrilegious in”
“[EU based] Got this new gig where I am basically supervising and requesting changes/new software, etc from a third party contractor. We are not forbidden from writing a bit of code (and touching or owning small things) but the bulk should be done by the company tasked with it. We are responsible for taking a problem the org has, give it to the company, check the design and propose changes, check the solution provided fits the needs at all stages of development, etc. (In the end I have many many”
“Been building a small product team remotely for about two years. Contractors worked fine for a while but eventually i needed to hire someone full time in portugal and had no idea where to start. i looked into setting up a local entity but quickly realized it didnt make much sense for a company at our stage. i tried a couple of eor providers before going with boundless i ended up going with them because their approach seemed like the best fit for what I needed at the time. The onboarding process”
“no, zero $ and I've had to turn down other contracts, I actually told HR this that it's both costing me other jobs and it is a job having to keep checking and attend meetings for zero pay. there still hasn't been a resolution. as a contractor they don't have to pay you unless its billed work hours.”
“I’m not sure how math works out in that scenario for Spain. I also lost a lot of protections but was able to save so much on taxes that I didn’t care about not having them (effective tax rate for employes is close to 50% whereas for contractors here in Lithuania it’s closer to 25% - I saved thousands each month). Agree that might not be the case in Spain.”
“I think you're focused on the wrong thing here. At least for us, "what terms/conditions" and all the examples you listed fall into the concern of logistics and how the engagement will work. But when we're considering an outsourced vendor (especially offshore vendors), the logistics and everything you're talking about is generally what we do last - after we've already made the decision that we want to engage a particular vendor, and after we've already agreed to gene”
“Basically these contracts are accepted and another small consultancy will run their payroll and will take a cut and these consultancies will sponsor them for H1b since they will be under the said consultancy payroll Usually 70-30 model”
“Hired a contractor overseas last year through one of those payroll platforms. The quote was $X/month per person, actual cost ended up being nearly double. The platform fees, local taxes, mandatory benefits in their country, currency conversion... it all adds up fast. Learned the hard way to ask for a full breakdown before signing. Not the headline rate, the actual take-home vs what you pay. Totally different numbers.”
“Do you need EOR? I used to work for a startup in SF (I’m based in Lithuania). We just had and NDA and contracting agreement signed and that was it - I sent invoices monthly and they paid me in usd. I had to register in Lithuania as as freelancer / sole proprietor and had to declare taxes on my own but that’s even preferable due to our tax code. TLDR no fees for my former employer”
“Agencies cost 1.7-2x direct hires when you consider real experience and levels, that's a steep management cost.”
“I never hire offshore devs through an agency. Far better to pay (and build a relationship with) a freelance recruiter, especially one that's good at finding timezone-relative people. For me, that's Latin America.”
“The fees are kind of excessive like you mentioned. Paying first month and accounting for off boarding are common as well if you haven't been a customer before. But if you work with them for a while you can ask to waive as you grow. Get two quotes and shop around and make the vendor show them apples to apples. They will waive things. I use Deel FWIW. They are expensive at list price but will come down.”
“We're a small SaaS startup, about 6 of us, and we made our first hire outside the country this spring, one engineer in Spain. I went in thinking the EOR fee was the flat number on the quote, and I was way off. The headline was something like 500 a month per employee, fine. Then there was a setup fee, then a deposit equal to a month of salary held for the whole contract, then an FX margin on every payroll run that nobody itemised, and a notice clause that meant offboarding wasn't going to”
“Hi, hola, I’m a Dutch guy currently working and living in the Netherlands. I’d like to move while keeping my current job with the help of an EOR arrangement. Any Dutch or other people here with experience of the companies that provide this kind of service? If yes any recommendations? Things to look out for? Your input is appreciated! Gracias! submitted by /u/Emideska [link] [comments]”
“From candidate perspective, the term RH offers are quite disadvantageous to candidates. From client perspective, I worked with stuff they provide and didn’t see value for the price.”
“in Albania, Europe... YES !!! 1-2 Hours and after that i get a lot of NO also hahahaha”
“We’d like to explore options of hiring outside of the US for a specific project. We’ll likely need a team of freelancers - primarily developers. Should we focus on LATAM or Eastern Europe first? We are flexible around time zones, but we’d like to move fast and avoid low-quality candidates. Any recommendations on how to go about it? submitted by /u/Daddy-Milker-69 [link] [comments]”
“My experience with MSP is they want to to replace the good on site IT with offshore and charge $200 an hour for offshore to take 6x as long as an on site would do.”
“I have 50 ppl that work for me in India. I haven't been there is 7 years. You would think that they would send me every few months but they don't bc it's dumb and expensive.”
“used both. Toptal is faster to get someone decent but you're paying for that vetting process, makes sense if you need someone this week and can't afford to screen 50 profiles. Upwork takes more time to filter but if you know what to look for in the first message exchange and in past work samples, you can find the same quality for less. really comes down to how much time you have to vet vs how urgently you need to start.”
“Hi! I intend to hire an overseas help for my physical therapy clinic based in the US. They will be handling email replies, social media, payments, sending out receipts etc. I don't have a lawyer yet for my practice. Do I need to have a lawyer to draft documents for this that covers HIPAA compliance, payment contracts etc? I saw people here recommend hiring someone through Upwork? Does anyone have experience hiring someone internationally for a healthcare setting? Thank you! submitted b”
“I'm curious about how billing rates translate into employee salaries in consulting/service companies. Let's say a service company in the UK, Netherlands, or Germany bills a client around $1,500 per day for a Senior Developer (around 15 years of experience) or a Business/Data Analyst. - What are the typical daily billing rates for a Senior Developer (15+ years, any tech stack) and for a Business/Data Analyst in the UK? - If a client is paying around $1,500/day, what would the employee'”
“had a client last year who wanted me to run weekly payroll for 12 employees and quoted them what I thought was high enough to make it worth my while. ended up being about $15/hour effective rate once you count all the back and forth. if the client actually needs payroll set up, pointing them to something like Outsail to compare payroll software options on their own is way cheaper than what you'd have to charge to make it worth your time. adds up quick when you realize you're basically on”
“That’s fine I’m not looking for money it’s just an interesting problem. Do they use the GAAP standards? Highly unlikely but that’s what I am trained on (being an American) and if you’re looking at exclusively a IFRS compliant product I would need to come up to speed on how that differs from what I’m used to.”
“How are we paying our nannies if they request to bring their own child(ren) vs responsible for just ours? I feel like a lower rate is reasonable bc their attention is divided but I want to do what’s fair and market standard. submitted by /u/Deakonfrost18 [link] [comments]”
“Does anyone have a list of companies that allow SWE to work from out of the country for extended periods? I’m based in the US but my family situation would require me to travel to India a few times a year and spend several weeks there. Are there any companies that are open to this? submitted by /u/Quirky-Debate3711 [link] [comments]”
“Has anyone heard of companies bringing employees to the U.S. on L-1A/L-1B work visas but keeping them on foreign payroll, then telling them U.S. taxes are not required because they are paid in their home country? In this situation, the employees physically work in the U.S. for years, receive no W-2, and may have no Social Security earnings reported. I’m curious what agencies typically handle this kind of issue: IRS, DOL, SSA, state tax authorities, or something else? I am just trying to understa”
“Hi everyone, I'm looking for real experiences from people who used Native Teams as an EOR, especially if you were tax resident in Croatia or another EU country. In my case, client payments went into the Native Teams wallet. From there, I could either process the money as salary or move it to their card. Native Teams told me the card was a company/business expense card meant for business-related costs, so I understood I didn't need to report anything to the tax authorities on my end regar”
“My US startup recently raised funding and we’re looking to scale a remote team in Manila pretty fast. For anyone who has done this before, does using an Employer of Record actually make the process easier? I’m mainly wondering about things like employment contracts, payroll, taxes, government requirements, benefits, and general onboarding. We’re trying to avoid getting stuck in local admin and compliance issues while moving quickly, but I’m not sure if an EOR is worth it for a small team. Would”
“I worked in the US entity for a Singaporean startup and have been owed wages for several months. I've done all I can in the US to recover the unpaid wages but the founder is not based in the US. Has anyone had a similar experience and what recourse do I have? TIA. submitted by /u/Desperate_Fault9516 [link] [comments]”
“went to reconcile the TFR accrual on our 2 Italian hires and the numbers don't match the partner firm's filings with INPS (€40K of liability sitting in a black hole). 3 months into employing them through what we thought was a standard EOR, somewhere between sales and the first quarterly reconciliation the EOR sales team forgot to mention the Italian operations sit with a partner firm, and our EOR is a reseller for someone else's entity in Italy. I asked who's the legal employer o”
“we're a US-based fintech that runs mostly remote, and our 3 hires in France and 2 in Germany are all going through Deel for payroll and compliance at the moment. it's been fine overall, but our renewal quote came in higher than i was expecting, the EU compliance support feels noticeably slower than it used to be, and the FR onboarding for our most recent hire took close to 4 weeks which was way past what was quoted on the call. so i've been looking around at what else is out there, a”
“So this is half a vent, and half a question. I run infra for a 60-person company with engineers in Manila, Berlin, Austin, and Brazil, and hr asked me to confirm the on-call schedule for our compliance audit, and they came back saying it doesn't comply with German working time law, which I had no idea even existed. Every time I think I've got the rotation balanced, I find out another country has a thing, is there a sane way to do this, or do most teams just pay everyone the German standa”
“Hi all. I'm a UK citizen and NZ permanent resident who left New Zealand in mid-2025 to work remotely in Southeast Asia for my NZ employer. I'm now approaching the 325-day absence limit that may trigger loss of NZ tax residency. I'm not currently staying in any single country long enough to trigger local tax residency. Two specific questions: What are the implications of becoming non-resident — particularly for income paid by a NZ employer or contractor? Given that I'm not becomin”
“So about 3 weeks ago I'm reconciling our payroll provider invoices and I notice one of our senior devs has a Lisbon address on a reimbursement form. For context we're a UK company and this person is on a UK employment contract, UK PAYE, the works. He'd moved to Portugal and just... not mentioned it, kept joining meetings at the same times, kept shipping. Honestly his output never dipped, which is partly why nobody clocked it. I sat there for a minute genuinely not knowing how bad it”
“We are a US company looking to hire one employee in Canada, and we are going to do the EOR route instead of establishing an entity. I know Deel and Remote are the leaders when it comes to EOR at $599/month. We also found RemoFirst at $199/month which we’re leaning towards. I am aware that you get what you pay for. But does anyone have experience with RemoFirst? Or any other EOR you can recommend that are good but not as expensive as Deel and Remote? Thanks in advance! submitted by /u”