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Contractor or employee? Check the role first.

Before you pay someone abroad as a contractor, check how the role will really run. National tests differ in their wording, but they look for the same signs, the ones the International Labour Organization lists in its Employment Relationship Recommendation: who controls the work, whether the person is part of your organisation, whether they work mainly for you, and whether they carry any business risk. The contract's title does not decide it; the facts do. Answer for the role as it will actually work, not as the contract will describe it.

Answer for the role

Where will the person work?
Will you decide how, when and where they do the work: their hours, methods and priorities?
Will they be part of your team: your email, your tools, your meetings, a place on your org chart?
Will they work only or mainly for you?
Is the arrangement open-ended, rather than a defined project that ends when it is delivered?
Must they do the work themselves, with no right to send someone else in their place?
Will you pay them the same amount every month, rather than per deliverable or per result?
Will what you pay be their only or main income?
Will you provide the equipment, software and materials they work with?
Do they carry no business risk: no fixed price they could lose money on, no costs of their own?
Will they represent you to customers, or negotiate and agree terms on your behalf?

How the check reads your answers

Every question is one of the signs the ILO Recommendation lists, asked so that yes means the sign is present. Four of them decide most national tests: control over how the work is done, being part of your organisation, working mainly for you, and an open-ended arrangement. A role with most of those reads as employment; a role with neither control nor integration and little else reads as a plausible contractor; everything between is the grey zone, where the country's own test, and whether it presumes employment, decides.

  • It does not apply any one country's legal test, and it is not legal advice.
  • It stores nothing: your answers live only in this page's address, so a result is a link you can share.

Questions about the check

Is this check a legal test?

No. It asks about the signs of employment that the International Labour Organization's Employment Relationship Recommendation lists and that national tests share, and tells you how strongly a role shows them. Each country applies its own test, and a local adviser should review any contract you rely on. Our EOR vs contractor guide quotes the test of each major hiring country.

Does a contract that says independent contractor settle the question?

No. Labour inspectors, tax authorities and courts look at how the work actually runs: who directs it, whether the person is part of your organisation, whether they work for others and carry business risk. A contract that describes a contractor while the work runs like a job does not protect the company.

What should I do if the role reads as employment?

Hire the person as an employee. Where your company has no entity in the country, an employer of record employs them under a local contract, runs payroll and pays the employer contributions, while you direct the work. Get matched ranks the providers that employ in your country for your hire.

Can someone who has worked for me as a contractor move onto an employer of record?

Yes. Converting a contractor to an employee through an employer of record is routine and needs no entity of your own. It does not change the period already worked as a contractor, but it ends the exposure from the day employment starts.

Contractor or Employee? Check a Role Before You Hire Abroad | BestEOR.co