How to Pay Remote Employees | Hacker News Reader

How to Pay Remote Employees

fredperrotta.com

125 pointsbradleybuda78 comments

I was really hoping this would go into some of the tax implications as well.

I was semi-recently denied a fully remote job because my state of residence would have caused the company to have a "sufficient physical presence" in the state, and meant that they would have to do a lot of extra work as well as paying extra sales taxes for sales in that state as well as setup the infrastructure to send the required taxes to that state.

It was enough of a hassle and cost that they decided to go with someone else over me, because they were in a state that the company already had employees in (at least that's what they told me...)

Why not mention the state?

You should contact your state representative (not member of Congress) and state senator (not US Senator) and let them know that you were denied a well-paying job because of the onerous standards your state has for remote work. They might be inclined to change it.

It's unlikely a state is going to unwind their taxing and funding model for a few remote jobs (nor should they).

EDIT: OP mentions the state in question is Florida, which has no personal income tax, but does have a state sales tax (disclaimer: I am also a resident of Florida); I believe a recent court decision on the HN front page [+] makes that a moot point (the business will have to collect those sales taxes regardless of nexus), which leads me to believe their decision not to hire OP was a bit short sighted.

[+] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17365366 | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/states-ca...

(Online Retailers Can Be Forced to Collect Tax, High Court Rules)

I actually thought I did (it's Florida by the way)...

I want to be clear, that I don't blame the state in the slightest. I honestly feel that companies should have to pay taxes where they operate regardless of how many employees live there, but what sucks is that a lot of states have difficult tax codes, esoteric and difficult ways of sending taxes in, have varying laws that make it extremely hard to follow the law unless you are a lawyer familiar with that area, and often won't help you if you need it.

I also don't really blame the company. I still feel like I would have been more than worth the extra hassle, but they aren't sure. And if they can avoid having to pay taxes in that state by not hiring me, and that can provide them a material benefit, then I'd probably do the same as them if I were in their position.

Blame the state! A complicated, unwieldy tax code is their/our fault. They created an untenable system that got in the way of you entering into a mutually beneficial contract with another individual(s). It is 100% their fault.

But it may not have been my state in particular, but the fact that they are all different.

Even the easiest tax system in the world won't make up for the fact that they need to record and charge for tax in that state, then send that money back to the state.

Short of not having sales tax, there really isn't a way that they can simplify it. And again, unless you are a lawyer that knows the tax laws in that area, you won't know how good or bad the local tax system is until you go to try and enter it.

Why not centralise it? Imagine a single account# that employees were paid to, where everything was taken care of? Lets say one earns $120K, an employer pays $10K a month to that number, and everything is taken care of, and the employee is responsible for the outcomes, e.g. if you move, you are responsible for changing your state of residence.

It is weird - and I say this as an Australian - that an employer can be on the hook for employee's moving. it would be much easier if this was managed centrally.

America has it rough there. Australia (with a MUCH lower population) has only federal income tax, and a clear delineation of what taxes each level of government can charge.

Several states have joined a consortium called the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board[1], which harmonized, standardized, and streamlined the sales tax policies between those states in order to support easier compliance across multiple states.

South Dakota's recent win at the Supreme Court[2] related to collecting sales tax from internet sales was due in large part to SD's very pragmatic and fair approach for out-of-state sellers (doesn't require you to know/care about local sales tax fluctuations and only want a base state-wide rate, exempts sellers with less than $100k of sales to the state, etc).

I'm with you in that I don't blame the state for wanting to collect taxes; stuff has to get paid for somehow, and states don't have the same infinite/unbounded pocketbook that the federal government has. But don't disregard what you said immediately after that - the difficulty with compliance is a huge hurdle. If the company could have made compliance a minor additional cost, they could bake that into their decision. Instead, it was an unbounded additional cost with unknown future repercussions and required heavy ongoing administrative work (it's another legal/accounting variable that adds potentially non-trivial overhead to all future legal and accounting work).

The streamlined sales tax stuff demonstrates the same type of collaboration that could be done to simplify remote employee administration, without having the full compliance baggage that comes with the same level of administrative overhead as if you had a full fledged office in the state. Doing so would make it far easier and less onerous to hire remote employees (or allow an on site employee to keep working for you if they move out of state). So it's still worth raising the issue to political figures, as it's very similar (if far smaller in magnitude) to the revenue loss they had by not making it easy to comply with sales tax stuff.

[1] http://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/ [2] http://thehill.com/policy/finance/393441-supreme-court-rules...

> I also don't really blame the company.

You should. Or conversely, you can look at this as having dodged a bullet.

On paper, they were willing to commit to multiple years of a presumptively-six-figure salary to you (seriously: an employment agreement is a big financial deal, even if it's legally "at will" -- there's a lot of money on the table) but pulled out because of some fear of bureaucracy and (maybe) a tax increase? That tells me that the commitment they were thinking of putting on paper wasn't worth, heh, the paper.

That's not a loyal employer, basically. If they're willing to cut corners with the State of Florida they'll do it with their own employees too.

No, this is backwards. The company didn’t want to cut corners, and full compliance with state laws is expensive. It’s a good sign that a company would carefully consider subjecting their legal and HR resources to this additional complexity. The additional tax burden is just a straightforward addition to per-employee overhead and there is a number of in-state employees above which that overhead is worth paying.

Cutting corners would be hiring an employee as a contractor in order to avoid dealing with the new state’s laws, or simply punting on acquiring any research or consultation, which would actually endanger the OP’s employment status. Perhaps you are used to companies operating this way, but it’s not a sign of a good employer.

I wonder when people say this sort of thing how much time they spend on tax compliance. I have a company in the UK and one in Australia, and man, it is a MINEFIELD. Very little of what one knows translates very well, as each country has its own quirks.

The USA is like that on STEROIDS. You can have 3 levels of income tax. that's insane! I can't image the costs of being complaint with that - not least of which is the cost of making an accidental mistake. I doubt many small businesses want to be experts in {INSERT STATE HERE}'s tax regulations and laws. Far easier to avoid the headache if at all possible.

And if you don't think that is the case, imagine instead of states it was countries. How much does a US company want to deal with Haitian laws?

Sure it's complicated. All I'm saying is that it's significantly less complicated and expensive than hiring a full time engineer. People don't think like this, but hiring a salaried person is a ~$1M transaction in typical cases. Would you be willing to go through that red tape for a sales contract that would net $1M in revenue? Of course you would. So refusing to do it for an employee is being pennywise and pound foolish, and says something deep about your level of respect for your employees.

But they had other prospective employees as well.

The choice wasn't "hire someone or don't hire someone", it was "hire someone that will complicate taxes and cause more expenses, or hire someone else of similar salary and skill that doesn't cause those issues".

Today's US Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v Wayfair eliminates the "physical presence" test for sales tax jurisdiction. [1] Thus your prospective employer's reasoning (at least as far as substantial presence for sales tax purposes) turns out to have been moot.

However, depending on the employer's business form, etc, there could be other implications to remote employee location beyond just complying with state payroll tax and labor law obligations. For example, when I was in a partnership, my out-of-state partners still had to pay state income tax on income "sourced" in my state even though they lived in a zero-income-tax jurisdiction.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-taxes/u-s-top-c...

Trinet [+] is the usual go-to for US-based fully remote organizations so they don't need to maintain business registrations in each state their employees reside in.

Disclaimer: Was employed through Trinet at a fully remote org.

[+] https://www.trinet.com/

On the plus side, the Supreme Court apparently threw that argument out the window today. [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17365366

They are going to pay sales tax for out of state sales soon.

I get that this is a different trending article in HN right now, but we're talking about paying employees and the taxes required for income here.. not talking about selling products.

No he's right, and that's what I was talking about too.

As far as I can tell (i'm not an accountant), a tax nexus mainly applies to sales made in that state, and sales tax that has to be collected and paid.

Income tax is a whole other beast, and I need to ensure I would be paying that if it was needed (Florida, my state, doesn't have any, so I don't need to worry about that).

That really sucks. It is a reality I see some of my clients facing too.

I've wondered what would happen if you offered to work as a self-employed 1099 employee, or if you opened your own LLC.

Does that employer offer health insurance? That's pretty much the only reason why someone would demand being a W2 employee in my mind. And there's lots of ways to get health insurance in this country.

The first few years the health insurance exchanges were open, getting insurance on your own was a breeze. I purchased insurance for my family for a few years that way, paying perfectly reasonable premiums for the benefits offered.

In my state, Kentucky, there is now only one insurer per county offering plans and they're HMO garbage accepted almost nowhere. Additionally, large insurers like Humana (that are based here!) aren't really offering private insurance plans.

Kentucky is just about W2 or bust for health coverage :(

I had other offers, so it wasn't a big deal in the end. But I've worked as a 1099 contractor before, and I'm not doing that again.

You say there's lots of ways to get health insurance in this country, but in my experience that's not the case. Not only is it vastly more expensive, but (not to get too political) I can't really rely on my ability to buy insurance as a single person at a reasonable rate to stay around.

Ironically I work as an insurance broker, but I assure you I am acutely aware of how absurd some of the premiums and markets can be.

I've become pretty cynical as of late. So like, sure, if you are working for Google or some other tech company that subsidizes 90-100% of an employee's health care costs, then you are getting a great deal, especially if you have a family. If you want a really large network with lots of doctors and you want a very very low deductible, then for a single person this is going to be $1100 for a single person, $2200 for a couple, $3100 for a family PER MONTH!!!!.

Now, that's for ridiculously good coverage of course. If you want the cheapest coverage possible, then it's about $500 per month for a single person, $1000 couple, $1500 family etc. But here we are talking about $6,000 deductibles and so on.

But, if you have literally no income, then you can get something like FidelisCare in NY for $20 a month, or Medicaid. There might be trouble with finding a doctor who accepts it. But that's the reality we face in this country. Unless you are 65, then you can get Medicare + Medigap for pretty damn cheap.

So, I am someone who is neither eligible for medicare, nor a large employer subsidy. So I only have catastrophic insurance- and that's from a full-time job! If I married my girlfriend, I would have better coverage from her employer. And when I was eligible for coverage from my parents, that one was pretty good.

The easiest thing is to just not get sick. But if you own your own LLC and you are charging very high hourly rates, your client (the one who would have employed you as a W2) is probably happy to not have you on their payroll, because the rates I quoted you above are the rates they would pay to offer you insurance.

For over five years, I have been offering my remote employees the option of payment, or partial payment, in bitcoin, or in more recent years in whatever other cryptocurrencies they choose. For crypto salary payments, I added about 3%-10% to the amount paid, because processing it was much easier for me, no hassles, no paperwork. It's a one click solution, like Jeff Bezos would say ^_-

I also prefer crypto payout methods for personal sentimental or ideological reasons. Moreover, many of my foreign and US contractors had difficulties with bank payments, severe local corruption, and bank account processing. These problems are usually happening because they are from traditionally unbanked social classes, they are not legally resident in their resident country, or they are in developing nations where good quality banking services are not aligned with their social class. But I would not deny that some could be attempting to avoid paying taxes or other such traditional obligations.

More than half of the international contractors tried cryptocurrency options. Many of them cashed out pretty instantly and I've heard they had no big problems doing it. Several kept their cryptos for years and they have made ridiculous profits now, even enough to retire. But I've also heard that a few timed the markets unfortunately or made bad side investments and lost a lot of the money they earned.

> because processing it was much easier for me, no hassles, no paperwork

Are you saying the payment was completely off the books? That doesn't seem to match "employees"...

I don't know how you would define employees, contractors etc. But the hard details of the deal have always been strictly an amount of payment for work completed. No more and no less than that. No written contracts, no sick leave, no government insurance, no paid holiday. All those expenses are their responsibility, and they know that.

But the real situation is a little softer, because of course I will be more flexible if a contractor seems to be good and of course they will be more flexible if I have been playing reasonably and fairly with them. Decent people feel happier behaving this way, and wouldn't we all be damn stupid if we didn't behave like decent humans? I try my best to avoid doing business with stupid people.

What I was going for was: if it's a standard contractor-like payment, what paperwork do you save by using cryptocurrency?

There's no paperwork. None. I'm working as an offshore company domiciled in a "tax haven"....

So that paperwork is one of the hassles that we save. Sending payment is one-click. Then it's done and there's no possible undoing.

Bank payments can be denied, reversed, routed strangely, delayed or something else. Bitcoin is more binary; either it works instantly or it fails and you know it. There's not so much doubt about it. Though high transaction fees for a few weeks last year did introduce more uncertainty, that is true.

Anecdote: Out of hundreds of small monthly salary payments I've sent out, I've only once had a big problem. What happened there was that the payee said she hadn't got it, but the blockchain said it was sent and confirmed.

Of course I certainly trust the blockchain to tell me the truth. More than I trust a bank. Who wouldn't?

I think the payee's computer had probably been malware hacked. (So I told her how to clean her PC and then I sent the same payment again as a one-off favor and that was ok, no further trouble and we still work together today).

Try sending money around the world and you will get to know how much manual work and paperwork is involved. Banks don't live in this century yet and if multiple countries are involved it gets worse.

Almost every link in the article is a referral or affiliate link.

The affiliate income helps them to pay their remote employees.

I don't know why I didn't think of that!

Lest someone mention that this doesn't affect the content of the article: it actually does because it provides the author a financial incentive to rank the higher paying links up in the page / more.

Thus no bitcoin...

It was like reading an advertisement

It was an advertisement!

It fact, it as an advertisement without a disclosure of financial incentives; which is in clear violation of FTC regulations.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

If anyone would like to join me in submitting a complaint to the FTC, you can start the process here[0]; all fields are optional so you only need to provide the information you want to, and can remain completely anonymous if desired.

[0] https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/GettingStarted?NextQID...

I love the casual language of the page you linked! It's much more friendly to the broad population and does pretty much devoid of legalese.

Its good example of writing for your audience. The audience of that page is bloggers, YouTubers, and social media "influencers."

That's exactly what this is.

Most payroll processors handle this for you. HR and Payroll for teams under 50 should never be done in house, there are so many pitfalls. IMHO, until you can hire a full time HR person, use a company to process/collect taxes, handle on boarding paperwork, and your employee handbook. ADP, Zenefits, etc.. can provide what you need to get started. You can always go internal later on once you are setup and learn the risks. Payroll is like dental work, its best to trust a professional that isn't you.

I worked for a 100% remote company for years. Although I wasn't involved in the payroll details, my impression was that the problems were just bureaucracy, and not as painful as this article implies. The answer to make it work was, "Hire a payroll processor."

Article is kind of an ad, but didn't know about Transferwise so glad I read it. Anyone have any comments about Transferwise?

Works great in my experience. It comes out way cheaper than our business banking for paying our workers in Europe from the US.

It's also really easy and convenient, while setting up wire transfers with our Major Bank in the US was complicated and arcane. To date, Major Bank doesn't offer us online wire transfers, for a business account!

We also use TransferWise to accept customer bank payments in Europe, without having an actual presence there.

I've used it to transfer money between an account in the UK (GBP) and my account in the Netherlands (EUR). It took less than 24 hours from signing up to Transferwise to having the money in my Dutch bank account and I got a good rate on it. No complaints from me whatsoever.

I used it a bunch of times, it’s great. Usability is awesome and it’s reasonably fast.

I'd recommend Square Payroll[1] for US based 1099 contractor payments. They handle sending the tax forms to the contractor at the end of the year and the ACH transfer. The only bummer is that they don't support recurring, i.e. each month send $X.

[1] https://squareup.com/payroll

I would love to know how companies can grant equity (vesting over time) to remote contractors (i.e., without establishing a legal entity in the remote country.)

It depends based on the country. Some countries require an addendum to your stock plan, or other changes. So you would really need to talk to a compensation and benefits attorney to be safe.

Signing an option contract with a vesting clause. Nothing about options or vesting is inherently tied to employment.

Hazards abound if you're a US startup and have employees in other countries that might treat ISOs significantly differently than the IRS.

I don’t think you can grant ISOs to non-employees. That doesn’t stop you from granting simple options. (It will probably be a tax headache, however. Derivatives usually are.)

> Wire transfer fees are a set amount, usually around $40, not a percentage of the total amount transferred. You can do the math to figure out at what dollar threshold sending wire transfers through your bank becomes cheaper than using Transferwise.

Absolutely do the math, but keep in mind that fees are not the only fees when doing FX: few banks will use the spot FX rate for wire transfers, they'll typically add a spread of about 3%.

yeah, you're getting skimmed hard between wire transfer cost and that spread. If you have access to an FX brokerage with reasonable fee, definitely use that.

I personally use Interactive Brokers, one free wire transfer per month, and you can get spot price on your exchanges. Only fees I pay are a couple dollars IB charges on exchanges, and twenty dollars or so my bank charges for receiving wire transfers. Only downside is that they hold the money for 3 months before allowing withdrawal into a different bank.

"...and twenty dollars or so my bank charges for receiving wire transfers."

For business accounts or personal? I received a single wire transfer to a personal account two months ago and didn't pay a fee. Maybe I get one free. Maybe there would have been a fee for a business account.

But I'm certain I've never heard, until now, anyone mention fees for receiving wire transfers.

Mine was for personal. The bank payment system has myriads of complicated rules/methods determining how they will charge you on a transfer, where the bank is located, wire vs ACH vs direct deposit vs other clearing mechanisms, international vs domestic, individual bank's progressiveness, your account type, etc.

Hire as long-term contractors - they send invoices at the end of the month, you transfer the funds through regular wire transfer.

Yep, that's how it works for me, working from Canada. I invoice on the 15th and the last day of the month, wire transfer comes in a week later (just because of how the company chooses to do payroll).

   Outside of the US, everyone is considered a contractor, even if they're a full-time member of the company

Wait, so they are not full time employee. For example they can terminate the contract and leave the company as they please

In the U.S. this is how employees work as well -- they can leave a company for any reason at any time. Conversely, employers can dismiss at employee for any reason and at any time as long as it's not illegal.

Are there contracts made so that the relationship between employers and employees is guaranteed/retained over a period of time ?

No, such limitations would likely be illegal (without additional compensation, beyond the wages, also being stipulated for the period where the employee couldn't leave / couldn't be let go) in many states. I have never seen such a guarantee / requirement in an employment contract, such a "key man" provision would likely be reserved for someone who is in possession of some critical knowledge to the company and company is willing to pay for it.

It's a double edged sword. It's easy to be let go (basically, pack your stuff and get out while escorted by security, just like in the movies), but it also makes it much easier for companies to take a risk and hire you. In Europe, hiring someone is a big risk and companies are extremely careful to hire since they're taking on a big responsibility. As a result, permanently contracted positions are even more common in Europe than the US as a result in my experience.

And yet US companies do homework assignments first round and 8 hour interviews second round if not even more. I have had jobs offered after a two hour technical interview plus 1 hour hr interview in Germany.

Meantime transferwise.com from article is down for more than 6 hours already, be careful...

I was keeping an eye out for mention/discussion of TransferWise. Been receiving payments via their service for several months, and have found it to be a well-designed experience, useful service with competitive/low fees.

Didn't know they've been down - related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17364752

Unfortunate, I have been using for the last 3 years and I couldn't recommend it enough.

Isn't it better for your contractors to incorporate an LLC or S-Corp in Delaware and for you to send money to those companies, so that contractors can deal with their own taxes themselves? LLCs would work also for foreign contractors.

Cryptocurrencies are a great way to pay remote employees or contractors with low fees.

what are the fees all-in? just buying the thing is say 1% then you have miner's fees of 0.3%? something like that?

Transactions in cryptocurrency can be zero-fee with NANO. Bitcoin transactions can be also free or almost free when using Lightning network. On-chain Bitcoin transactions are priced by markets and can be high when the network is congested, but are currently very low (about $0.2).

Exchanging to and from local currency depends on how you do it. Most of the cost comes from the volatility, which in general might turn into profit as well. Exchanging at ATMs or 'quick buy/sell' services can be pricey (5% or so). Transferring fiat currency to/from a bank account is generally free.

Anyone know of remote companies that hire systems programmer not front end or backend for a web app?

Quick callout: we're hiring at Gusto if anyone wants to join us...

gusto.com/careers

Hilariously sad: The Last Day for Shipping to Europe (For Now) Will be May 24, 2018

Why in the world a backpack business would be so worried about GDPR?

Some are responding to the GDPR in a quixotic fashion akin to those who boast about not taking a raise because they "don't want to pay more in taxes" after getting bumped into a higher income bracket.

removed

I always find it funny when people say it's only 15USD when a wire transfer in Europe in free

It's 40USD to of from the US, and no European bank wants to deal with the arcane way US wire transfers are handled. If you want to deal with that crap you have to pay the premium. It's not that much of a burden, because US rates are much higher than European rates, so you are still winning a lot. Just banks hate it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com