Those are the best.

Oh, of course. Gotta love agile though. If you can't show some level of progress in 1-2 sprints, then goodbye.

lol, if a client is capable of a waterfall that works, they wouldn't be outsourcing.

I understand that if you don’t have the proper legal stuff in place it might be hard to manage people changing their fiscal address to other countries. But arguably I can travel the whole year on tourist visas and still pay taxes on my home country. As long as you don’t the country where you do your taxes, the “legal” part shouldn’t matter much for your company. Not sure about work insurances.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I got an offer :)

rwvgoe Yes. A fingerprint scan.

Weird fact. His company limit remote meetings from home, especially with clients. Workers keep leaving the meetings to deal with “domestic emergencies” aka fights happening within the household.

It’s become so regular, HR are beginning to think most of them are staged so the worker can get out of meetings.

They scan in their fingerprints, sit them in separate offices & get them to attend remote meetings. Different teams are called in batches to comply with social distancing.

(I was asked if I could stage a fight in the background during a cost analysis meeting once to go disrupt it :face_with_rolling_eyes:)

Treat your workers like that and they just find more ways to cheat

😐 can’t believe there are places that work like this. People that are not professional and don’t do their jobs should be let go. This is not school where you ground everyone because 1 kid misbehaved so “it sends a message” facepalm

Is there a channel that I can brainstorm and develop a business idea with other people?

maybe #_startups

Job related question for the devs in here. First, to introduce myself, I'm a U.S.-based software engineer, with most of my experience in recent memory doing Java and Scala for microservices, as well as lots of DevOps stuff. Going on a job hunt soon, and looking mostly at DevOps jobs (so not pure development). Obviously there are tons of fully remote opportunities, many remote thanks to COVID, and some companies okay with 100% remote post-COVID. I wanted to ask (for those of you that are full-time employees or that contract 40 hours a week with one company), how many of you are open with your employers about your nomadic lifestyle? Do you tell your employers where you're working from? Are you on a cool enough team that you can talk about travel and stuff with your teammates? And are there companies anyone can suggest that are nomad friendly, where I might even work with other nomads? (Would be happy to talk more about my experience and what I'm looking for). Mostly interested in working for U.S. companies, possibly doing some geoarbitrage. Also, tell me if this is the wrong channel for this question.

I tell my coworkers I am a nomad but have learned not to bring it up unless they do. Unless everyone in the org is nomading, it feels like bragging to mention the exotic location you’re in. This effect is magnified right now by the pandemic. Sucks not being able to share your excitement with coworkers, but it’s better not to be “that guy”.

I’m not traveling anymore that much, but if I do, I won’t be able to access our customer’s data because of GDPR / CCPA etc. So that might be an issue if you need to access production data for a company complying with these kind of things.

I didn't even think of that! That might be a good reason to prioritize dev jobs over DevOps jobs. One thing I am concerned about is the accounting headache I might create for my employer by being honest with them. Like, technically, in the U.S., my employer would have to know exactly where I'm working so they can deduct the appropriate taxes. And I imagine things are even more of a challenge for international stuff.

I’m working for a Canadian company, but when I was in other countries I was paid in my Canadian account like if I was in Canada.

Well I'm certainly not an expert on this stuff. In fact, I need to find myself a good accountant ASAP. But like in the U.S., if I was working remotely from another state for a week, technically, I'd owe that state taxes. But - realistically, if you're somewhere for a few weeks, you're not gonna be on anyone's radar. My concern would be being in another place for, say, 3 or 4 months, which is about as long as I want to stay places, and being on the radar of the local tax authorities (whether we're talking different U.S. state or another country). My thoughts are to just maintain a permanent address in my home state and then if some other state or country comes after me for taxes, just pay up.

Other countries won’t come after you for taxes, because you won’t be able to enter the countries if you say you’re going to work - unless you have appropriate work permits.

Ahh ok, thanks, good point

Usually, digital nomads are just on ‘vacation’

Yeah so I suppose I need to find myself a good U.S. accountant to figure out the tax stuff here.

Can't you get around the GDPR issues of accessing prod data by using a jump box?

Hmm that is a good question.

It's the same with PCI DSS / cc data stuff. You cannot process CC data from your home but we never had a problem with audits when utilizing jump boxes at our office.

I work fulltime as fullstack developer in a Canadian Cloud and ML consultancy company. My position is fully remote and team is cool with wherever I live or travel. Currently I live in Bangladesh but when pandemic is over I am gonna start nomading. I pay my income taxes in my own country. Don't know what my company do own their end.

We’re doing a DPIA for a customer in the EU and just accessing the data from another country could be an issue - The customer needs to asses the risk for every countries and they also have to submit stuff to a regulator for them to approve it. If you change countries every month, that would be an issue.

One option might be to find a small company that doesn't really have the resources to even bother trying to comply with these things. And who might need my expertise so much that they wouldn't care if they found out I was doing something shady.

Have everything saved on the cloud, not on your hard drive + encrypt HD + create a ‘Clean’ profile that you can log in.

I pay an employer of record in the US so my clients don’t have to deal with tax issues. It’s easier than setting up a consultancy yourself if you’re not actually planning to run a consultancy with employees.

I got started nomading by listing my parent’s house as my residency, paying state taxes there, getting a family member to scan my mail and email to me, etc. From an HR employment standpoint it was no different than working from home. Unless a company has strict rules about how and where you conduct your work and explicitly forbid employees from doing work outside their home office, outside the US, etc. in the employment contracts I don’t see how they’d be able to complain about it unless it was impacting your productivity or ability to coordinate with your teammates. If you are an independent contractor, my understanding is that US companies are forbidden to dictate how and where you do the work, so there is even less room for them to object to you doing that work from abroad.

kmnkhvwpne So my most recent job before I was let go, was a remote (pre-covid) company. Working abroad wasn't unusual by any means, but it's a gray area for sure. HR said if I worked from Mexico for > 30 days, I would have to pay taxes in MX, but they fired me before that happened 🤷‍♂️ .

Doesn’t “fully remote” mean outside the borders of the U.S.? 🤨

At least in the US, fully remote means working from home and not having to show up to an office. That's all. There are still legal and tax hurdles for companies to get over to offer fully remote globally.

Yeah going global is not a trivial matter, though my qualm is with the nomenclature, genuinely why doesn’t simply “remote” describe working from home (or wherever you want) and not having to show up at an office? Why “fully”? Is this typical Americanised “taking it up to 11 cos 10 isn’t good enough”?

Some companies use the term “remote” to mean you are able to work from outside the office part of the time. Two days a week of remote work is a nice perk for people with kids, but isn’t really enough to nomad, especially if you’re not allowed to log in from a foreign country.

I sought out my company for it’s remote first culture. Working remotely was seen, and continues to be seen, as a competitive advantage by our leadership team, and has helped us scale from ~600 to ~3k staff during my time here.

Most companies hit a pain point as they move away from one or two hubs because their processes were unwittingly built around being physically present in those hubs. We didn’t have that. So we handled the scale out, transition from domestic to global, and Covid really well.

As far as me personally, I pulled my boss’ boss back into an extra meeting during the interview process just to make 100% sure that they were okay with not only remote work but indefinite short term international travel. Setting expectations and requirements early, and being above board about the whole thing, has been a huge boon during my unusually long tenure here. Highly recommend.

Anyone hiring for devops on a contract basis?

Is it ok to post a HackerNews link here? I’m trying to help my CTO hiring…

Sadly I'm pretty sure it's _not_

Read channel description for instructions

Is anyone working at Shopify?

Hi everyone.
What would you guys recommend in terms of registering a company or invoicing service to invoice an EU client (working as a full-time consultant).
I was thinking of an Estonian/UK company or using Xolo. Both countries have about 20% corporate tax. I'm aware of the CFC rules, but just wondering on how to get started at this point. The client wants my company name for the contract and I don't have a company registered yet so trying to solve this issue with your guidance possibly. Much appreciated

What's the location of the client? Are they VAT-registered?

Sweden. I'm not sure, let me check it. Is it important?

They are likely VAT-registered unless it's a small startup. It's important because if you incorporate in Estonia and register for VAT, and your client isn't VAT registered, then you have to collect VAT from them. It increases your gross invoice value.

sfvmbtltwi note that Estonia only has corporate tax when you take out money. If it stays in the company and you reinvest it’s 0%.

0% tax in Isle of Man, but you’ll pay a few thousand a year in accountant fees

While what pvpuznoupyxxc is saying is true, in the case of a one-person software development consulting business it is accepted by EMTA to pay yourself salary to take out money with a 100% employee/0% board member split. The former is not taxed in Estonia, only at the personal level wherever you are liable to income tax.
Employee salaries are of course a business expense, so if what you’re paying yourself is the same as what you’re billing clients, there won’t be any retained profits accumulating on the balance sheet (that would indeed be subject to corporate income tax when paid out as dividends).

In general Estonia is a pretty good place to set up a corporation for European clients. Absolutely everything can be done online, business services like accounting are affordable (as long as you don’t go with overpriced Xolo), the only downside is banking options Estonian banks won’t open an account without a ‘connection to Estonia’. While there used to be loopholes to engineer something they’d deem sufficient, that time is over now and even existing accounts have been closed sometimes. In practice you’ll be limited to EMIs like Wise.

pswkuuzqpfvtq is there anything in particular about reinvesting that this applies to? Or just general use for further business development?

ektwdezhsr It used to be that EMTA (Estonian Tax and Customs Board) said that at least some part of your time was spent on company management duties, and that therefore you would have to pay some part of total renumeration as board member compensation (taxed by Estonia). Now that’s right, you would only have to pay income tax for the employee salary paid by your Estonian company to you where you are personally tax resident (or liable to income tax for some other reason).
Renting an office in Estonia would probably work, haven’t looked into it myself since so far I’m happy with Wise. Some people are saying it’s risky to only rely on them as they block accounts and send people into compliance process hell, but so far everything’s been fine for me. :crossed_fingers:
VAT registration is real easy for an Estonian OÜ, your corporate service provider can help you out with it or you can also do it yourself online if you feel comfortable reading regulations and navigating bureaucracy.
Your client gave you their VAT number so that, if your company is registered for VAT, you can put their number on your sales invoices, add 0% VAT and refer to Reverse Charge.
I’d ask why register for VAT right away as a software developer consultancy business? It’s only mandatory in Estonia once you hit 40k€/year, and presumably the time spent on bureaucratic requirements (monthly filings!) outweighs what you’ll save by not paying VAT on a new MacBook Pro.
Your B2B client should not care whether you’re registered for VAT or not, for them it does not matter.

yyfxcwbsmc no residency requirement, I’ve had an IOM company for a few years and am not resident

igdbtbnbbj have your accountant go through how many expenses you can run through the company, this accumulates to savings over time as they become pre-tax expenses. Another thing you can do is if you invest in any shape or form, do it through your company instead of you as an individual. But be sure to double check options with someone who knows local regulation and your context, as always 😄 (also it’s not cheating on tax, it’s taking control over when you pay taxes as you always have to pay tax eventually) Main value is of course on the further business development.

suxnwfgxtv re VAT, it's what vbaluch said. If you'll be VAT-registered, then it's a reverse charge (0%) because you're in different EU countries (google "reverse charge" if you want more but pretty sure it will be 0% for your digital services). If you aren't VAT-registered, then you don't charge VAT. Either way it's 0% for you and your client, which is nice.

From personal experience - nothing wrong about Wise. I'm a customer for 5+ years, and I also worked there a while back (full stack developer). Happy customer, happy employee, I have a lot more confidence in Wise (slow to market but sustainable and profitable) than in Revolut (very fast and aggressive, make regulatory mistakes, licenses revoked etc.). I hold both company and personal accounts with Wise.

Re reinvestment, it just means keeping cash in the company or spending on behalf of the company. For example, you earned $100k in revenue last year and decided not to take out dividends or pay salary, i.e. the cash just stays in your company. At the end of the year, $0 were distributed as profit, hence $0 tax. The 20% corporation income tax kicks in when distributing dividends. "Keeping cash in the company" - it could be cash in the bank account doing nothing, or invested wherever on behalf of the company.

Another thing I feel we should clear up here, if you pay yourself a salary, you won't need to pay 20% corp income tax on that money because it's cost of business (not a profit from the company's perspective). If you earned $100k last year and pay all of it in salary, your business made $0, there is no profit to distribute, hence $0 corp income tax.

But when you distribute profit as dividends, you pay 20% corp income tax to Estonia + whatever the dividend tax in your country. In my case, I'm Latvian tax resident and I have 0% dividend tax (if corp income tax was paid off and it isn't an off-shore). I distribute my whole income as dividends (a lot more tax efficient for me than salary) and I only pay 20% to Estonia (because Latvia doesn't want to tax it further). The drawback is that there's a lag between what I earn now and when I can distribute it, e.g. income earned this year can be paid out next year (after filing annual report etc.).

Also take into account what your client says re signing contracts with non-EU/EEA entities - some may be fine to have B2B contract with e.g. Russian or UK company, some will consider this troublesome (witholding taxes, agreements on services between EU/non-EU and so on) - EU-to-EU company is always super easy and no-brainer. Outside, they are sometimes not too happy. Also, even if this client is okay with that, the next one may not be.
I have had Estonian company managed by Xolo for 1.5years now and pretty happy - the recaps above is pretty much where my experience is too.

So much awesome info from each and every one of you slightly_smiling_faceclap

Hey, I’m going to have to revive this thread because I got intrigued by what you guys (<@U03PMCU9W> & U01GC1QV09X) said.

How does this thing of paying yourself a salary that is not taxed in Estonia but only in the country of your residency work?

I have a Estonian company for about a year and I though the best structure was to pay yourself dividends (and get taxed 20%) instead of paying yourself a salary and paying much more in taxes.

Could you guys maybe expand on this?

This is going to heavily depend on the country you’re tax resident in

+1 on what ncczjyfqfzbnfbly said

I didn’t do much research on paying myself a salary because it looks too painful in my country and immediately too tax inefficient so I just didn’t bother. It’s painful because I _think_ I need to register the employment contract with my tax authority, it seemed like social contribution must be paid from my Estonian OU directly, but the income tax passed over to me so I could pay it after declaring my income. Something like that but don’t take my word on it - it was confusing, things might have changed in Latvia, and it wasn’t worth the research.

Re tax efficiency, I’d have to pay employee social contributions, employer social contributions (this is often forgotten when calculating), and employee income tax. It gets to around 60-65% total tax in my case. I prefer 20% on dividends and call it a day.

yiywyvaiowgavx Also if you’re a Brazilian tax resident, you need to carefully look at CFC laws

Is there any downside of Xolo not letting you use your Estonian OU since it's mandatory to register one through them?

Btw Russia has a CFC threshold of 110k euro (per year?). It is mentioned on the PWC page, but more research should be done.

ychhjovgpalprs excactly what flfbgykfbsyrjakf said. Sometimes it’s better to pay only dividends (like for U03PMCU9W) sometimes only salary is better (like for me), sometimes you want a combination of both to take advantage of progressive tax rates.

I will also mention that apparently “salary” through a typical “employee relationship” is not the only option. for example, for tax residents in Poland, it is more effective to sign “contracts for specific tasks”.

I suppose it doesn’t make a big difference in Estonia, as essentially it’s still a company cost there. however, using task contracts allows to skip additional costs in Poland (social security if you don’t need it) and also to use lower tax brackets. E.g. for software engineering it’s 8.5% of personal income tax for up to ~19k eur and then 32%.

so if you want to withdraw smaller amounts from the OU (e.g. less than 25k eur/year) and reinvest the rest, it’s a really great setup

CFC rules that you need to be aware of apply as well, that’s a separate discussion

Is anyone here an expert on hiring freelancers on fivver or anything like that?

In my experience it doesn’t matter where you hire, it’s about your skill in identifying the people compatible with your needs, expectations and work culture. I used to get mixed results, since using the approach in the book Who I haven’t had issues. If I can avoid the cheap parameter I go towards platforms with strong pre-vetting to same time as hiring is painfully time consuming. If I have the time and/or cheap need I usually go towards Upwork as there is ample information and performance tracking. Then always hire slow and fire fast ideally.

I guess you mean the 📖 Who The "A" Method for hiring

Exactly, thank you prayskin-tone-3

Just noticed a new remote jobs board, maybe helpful for someone trulyremote.co/|https://trulyremote.co/