Can you hire someone abroad without opening a company there?
The question that stops most agencies before they start, answered properly, including where the answer is genuinely no.
This comes up in almost every conversation we have with a studio thinking about hiring outside its own country, usually phrased as a worry rather than a question. Somebody heard that you need a legal entity. Somebody else heard about permanent establishment risk. The conversation stops there and the role gets filled locally at three times the cost.
The confusion is that two different questions are being asked at once.
Employing somebody, and engaging somebody
Employment means putting a person on a local payroll: withholding their income tax, paying employer contributions, giving them statutory holiday and notice under that country's law. Doing that yourself generally does require a local entity, or an employer of record who has one and rents it to you. That is the expensive, slow answer, and it is the one people have usually heard about.
Engaging a contractor is a different arrangement. The person runs their own affairs, invoices you, and handles their own tax where they live. You need a contract and a way to pay them. You do not need a company in their country. This is how the overwhelming majority of cross-border creative work is done, and it has been for years.
| Contractor | Employee on local payroll | |
|---|---|---|
| Local entity needed | No | Yes, or an employer of record |
| Who handles their tax | They do | You do |
| Typical setup time | Days | Weeks to months |
| Typical monthly overhead | None beyond the fee | Entity costs or an employer of record fee |
| Suits | Ongoing project work, retainers | Full integration into a team, long horizons |
Where the contractor route genuinely goes wrong
The honest caveat is misclassification. Most countries have rules that look through the label on the contract to what is actually happening. If somebody works only for you, on your hours, with your equipment, under day to day direction, indefinitely, then a tax authority may decide they were an employee whatever the paperwork said. The consequences land on you rather than on them.
In practice this is manageable, and the things that keep you on the right side of it are the same things that make the working relationship good:
- Agree deliverables and a rate rather than fixed hours at your desk.
- Let them work when they want within an agreed overlap window.
- Do not make them exclusive to you, and do not act as if they are.
- Use a written contract that says what is actually happening.
- If someone is genuinely doing a full time job for you indefinitely, revisit the arrangement rather than hoping.
What the contract needs to say
You do not need anything elaborate. A few pages covering the following will cover most of what goes wrong, and a lawyer in your own country can produce one that you reuse for every hire.
- Who owns the work. State that copyright and any other rights transfer to you on payment. This is the clause people forget and the one that matters most when a client asks for the project files two years later.
- The rate, the currency and when you pay. Monthly on receipt of invoice is normal and easy to honour.
- That they are an independent contractor responsible for their own taxes where they live.
- Confidentiality, in plain terms. Unreleased client work is the usual concern.
- How either side ends it. Two to four weeks of notice is normal for a retainer and protects both of you.
Have it in English and, if you can, alongside a translation. Somebody signing a contract they can only partly read is a bad start to a working relationship even when it is legally fine.
Paying somebody in another country
Usually the least difficult part, and the part people worry about most. Across Central Asia, Wise and Payoneer are both routine, and designers who already work with foreign clients tend to have one set up before you ask. In Georgia and Ukraine the individual entrepreneur schemes are widely used and make invoicing straightforward. Elsewhere in the region, agree the route before the first invoice rather than after, because local rules on receiving foreign currency have changed more than once in recent years.
Pay in a currency you both understand, usually dollars, and pay on time. In a market where foreign clients have a mixed reputation, paying promptly is the cheapest competitive advantage available to you.
The obstacle that is actually in your way
Having established that you can engage somebody without a company in their country, the next thing you discover is that you cannot advertise the role there. Local job boards want a local phone number for verification, a business registration they can check, and a listing in the local language approved by a moderator.
That wall is procedural rather than legal, which makes it more annoying rather than less. Nothing says a foreign studio may not hire here. The sign up form simply cannot be completed.
That is the part Elsewhere handles. We are the registered advertiser in each market, so the verification and the moderation are already done. You write the role once in English, choose your markets, and we translate it, post it and pay the boards. Applicants come back ranked by how closely their portfolio matches reference work you uploaded.