Hacker News Reader

Comment by meritt | Hacker News Reader

One big hurdle to hiring remote (we're 100% remote) are the significant expenses each time someone from a new state joins our team. All sorts of new taxes/fees/fines/paperwork, suddenly we have nexus in StateN and they want to tax our revenue or income, and providing health insurance has proven to be really difficult on a per-state basis. And that's without going down the path of hiring someone remotely out of the country. Fully remote is awesome, but there's definitely a lot of incentive to do so using only contractors.

If someone wants to start a company focused on streamlining the hiring & benefits process across state or country lines, I think that would go a very long way to increasing the remote-only attitude among startups.

View on HN

A PEO like TriNet can typically manage it all for you (for $$$ though).

I personally prefer to pick each service provider separately. For example, a payroll processor like Gusto will handle all the onboarding forms (W-4, I-9, W-2, state new hire reports), state insurance compliance, fed and state payroll taxes in all 50 states. TaxJar figures out and reports sales taxes in all states. Guideline for 401Ks etc. Healthcare is definitely still the most problematic one.

Yes, it could be easier and more streamlined. However there's already some great services that can make hiring in multiple states easier.

How much of a $$$ is trinet? We had it in a earlier startup (20 - 30 ppl) and we got a significantly better health plan

> And that's without going down the path of hiring someone remotely out of the country.

That's weird, none of the US startups that hired me (I'm from EU) complained about it.

They actually complained more about the wire fees than anything else :)

Maybe it's because I'm setup as a one-man-company in my home country?

The way I'm setup, it's actually less paperwork for me if the company is outside the EU -- which is why I prefer those.

If you are your own company, thus working as a contractor, that's different than hiring an employee to work in an existing company. There are lot of obligations that companies have for each employee in terms of taxes, health insurance, and the like, and in the US they can differ from state to state. If you hire an independent contractor, however, all of those obligations fall to the contractor themself, and the contractor is likely only dealing with one state's laws, so they don't have that complexity.

That's probably it.

I just checked my papers now and it does say "consultant".

Is there a difference (legally, in the US) between contractor and consultant?

Consultant isn't a legal definition there is a difference between if they are paying you for services rendered (b2b) or employing you.

Basically unless there is a requirement for reverse VAT charges which isn't applicable to the US there is nothing a company needs to do when hiring a contractor other than pay the invoice, on the other hand there are tons of regulatory and legal requirements that they need to meet when they offer you employment.

I am out of the country (US). Worked remotely with US couple of times. NDA, contract governed under California law with mandatory arbitrage, send invoice, give IBAN, collect swifts.

Or he can start one man ltd corp in his country and make company-company contract. It is mostly a matter of will.

Oh wow! I have only hired remote employees within my own state and contractors out of state. That does sound like an entirely different level of challenges. How many employees do you have within your own state vs out of state?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com