If you're in USA/UK/Australia and are trying to hire remote workers from another country, how hard is the legal process? Is this something a small startup could think of doing? Or do they just not do it because of the legal hassles?
To do it legally & properly it is a pain and does require a lot of setup and isn't generally super cost effective. I highly suggest no small business try to "hire" internationally at least based on my experiences dealing with it. If you want to use international people do a contract type relationship which while it can still put you under tax scrutiny it is a lot easier to manage and do. Either way you will need legal advice because the moment you start having someone in another legal jurisdiction start doing work for you there comes with it different IP laws, protections or the lack there of and stuff like that. So you need legal advice to protect the business both at home and abroad.<p>This is at least as a US Company, I don't know about how UK or Australian businesses might differ.
Employee or contractor? Employee is always a pain. Contractor, on the other
hand, seems like a home run for all parties. In the US, no tax reporting or
withholding as long as the contractor does all the work remotely.
Pretty easy if your remote worker has a LLC. You get an invoice for services and file it like any other business expense.<p>It's quite hard if you want him to be an employee though.