Hi Rob, I can help answer this from two perspectives: I work for a British company without a Canadian office, and I'm also a CPA (accountant), although I'm not a tax expert.
I'm a contractor with the company I work for, and my contract directly states that. It also says that I'm responsible for any taxes. I invoice them on a monthly basis and I get paid by wire transfer. I'm incorporated though, so the contract is between my corporation (who I am sole shareholder) and the company, but same idea. Benefit of being a contractor is that you get to deduct business expenses. Downside is there essentially are no labour standards other than your contract. In theory you could sue them, but you'd probably need to sue them in an American court. Make sure to invoice them frequently if you go down this road so you don't lose too much if they stop paying you! My contract lays out notice periods and everything though, for both me quitting or them wanting to fire me. I'm assuming you're interested in working for a specific company in the US. I'm also assuming that you will be working remotely from Canada for them. Do they deal with contractors a lot? They shouldn't be paying payroll taxes in that case, and if they would be you have no way of claiming those as tax paid on your behalf. If they have no Canadian presence, you shouldn't need to charge HST either. I'm not familiar with American income tax rules though so I can't say if you would need to file a US tax return but I highly doubt it. I don't need to file a UK return for instance since I'm technically exporting services from Canada that are being consumed there. The CRA however does determine that some people, despite what the contract might say, are actually employees rather than contractors based on the substance of the contract. There's a few factors that go into it, but the risk mostly is on the company rather than you I believe. If they aren't hiring a ton of Canadians, it's probably unlikely that they'll ever notice the relationship you have with them though so maybe it's not worth worrying about now. It's definitely been a good experience for me working remotely. I could never have found a cool position like the one I have in Canada, but there's definitely more risk involved. If you're going down this road, if you don't already have an accountant you might want to get one to handle the complexities of the taxes. I can recommend the firm I used to work for (who I no longer get referral bonuses from!) I'm also happy to answer any specific questions as well if you wanted to email me directly. Thanks, Nick On Wed, Jan 5, 2022, at 11:31, [email protected] wrote: > Hi > > I know some of you work for employers outside of Canada, but they may have > Canadian divisions. > > How are payroll and other labour standards handled, if they don't have a > Canadian office? > > Do they just send you the full pay and you have to pay the payroll taxes as > a non-incorporated contractor? > > Do they just pay payroll taxes to California and USA, and you have to file > that info with CRA? > > Or are all of the above possible, plus more? > > > > > Thanks, > Rob > > > >
