P.S. I used to be a lawyer and I can weigh the risks. Completely negligible compared to all the other risks I have as a founder.
As you say this is risk. You can make any tradeoff you want, and you are probably right.
You can hire someone you think may be working from Iran. You're pretty sure you won't get caught violating sanctions for it.
> I could not care less if they pay their taxes
I don't know LATAM employer side taxes, but if their tax offices do decide to target you then what you "could not care less" about will not matter much.
But shrug, yeah you probably won't get caught.
My favorite lawyer quote: "Legal didn't say we can't do it. Legal says if we do it then we may all go to jail. It's not the same thing".
And indeed it's not. But it's not trash.
They can go after my contractors but then my contractors would just move to another country like Uruguay (which btw is very tax friendly towards remote workers and hardly charges any taxes). Some of my contractors have done exactly that.
France won't sue the German employer, If anything illegal occured, "France" will sue the person exporting the labor, not the person buying it.
The jurisdiction of France encompasses French people, and French entities.
If a law was broken in Germany about importing labor, then it's the German goverment enforcing the law.
Which only means you have to follow the laws of your own country only. Which includes your own countries sanctions, but doesn't include all countries sanctions.
And as the employer, I'm the importer of the labor so I don't care. If my contractor didn't pay their taxes that is not really my problem - they will just have to do deal with that themselves. What's very important is that I, as labor importer, didn't have to pay payroll taxes of the country where the labor was based. In the case of Argentina it's close too 100% of the salary. When i pay my contractor triple the average engineering salary they would get from a local country they are more than happy with this situation.
You know that's not true, because you know that shoplifting in France applies to visitors too. Even if one tourist assaults another tourist. Or (in some other countries) two unmarried foreigners kissing in public.
People have had their children taken away while on vacation, because they beat them and local law did not like that.
If you think that France doesn't care about illegal workers within their borders then I don't really know what to tell you.
Different countries have different level of cooperation. I would not bet on an investigation in France about (alleged) organized tax fraud being "unable" to reach German defendants.
> France won't sue the German employer, If anything illegal occured, "France" will sue the person exporting the labor, not the person buying it.
Ok, good luck with that. I hope you got good lawyers advicing you on this risk, and defending you if it happens to you.
> Which only means you have to follow the laws of your own country only.
Like how Assange (Australian citizen) has no risk of being deported to the US to face charges based in laws only in the US, for something he allegedly did while in Europe?
The US doesn't deport its own citizens even to face charges of war crimes, so it may be a special case. But other countries do.
The grandparent comment (from aiisahik) is now replying to you about contractors.
For contractors I agree much more. But a contractor is not an employee (with a huge caveat, because depending on jurisdiction a contractor can be declared a de facto employee, and legally treated as such. It's a long and complex story).
Even from the article:
> “If an employee is in the wrong place long enough, it can have real tax implications for the company as well as the individual,” said Black, who added that many companies fear accidentally establishing a taxable presence in a foreign country.
This from a guy who "helps companies deploy and manage employees around the world" for a living.