Working Remotely for a Foreign Employer: Why It Is Never Just "I Work Online"

This is the arrangement almost everyone tries to construct, because on the face of it it is the best of everything: keep the salary, keep the role, keep the colleagues, change the country. No job hunt, no qualification recognition, no starting over.

And it can work. What it is not is simple, and the gap between how simple it feels and how complicated it is accounts for a lot of unpleasant surprises - some of which land on you, and some of which land on your employer, which in practice means they land on you.

Let me set out what actually changes the moment you start working from somewhere else.

Your tax position changes, whatever your payslip says

The instinct is that if the company is in country A, the contract is under country A’s law, and the money goes into a country A bank account, then country A is where you are taxed.

That is not how it works. Employment income is generally taxable where the work is physically performed. You sitting at a desk in country B, doing the work in country B, means country B has a claim on that income - regardless of where the payer sits.

On top of that, living somewhere makes you tax resident there once you cross the relevant threshold, and residence usually brings your worldwide income into scope. So you can end up with country B taxing you as a resident on everything, while country A continues withholding tax from your salary because its payroll system has no idea anything has changed.

Being taxable in two places is not the same as being taxed twice - treaties and foreign tax credits exist for exactly this and generally work. But they work through you filing and claiming, not automatically, and they do not fix the fact that your employer is withholding in the wrong country. The principles are in tax residency explained and the relief mechanisms in avoiding double taxation.

The practical consequence people hit: no tax is being withheld where you actually owe it, so you build up a liability across a full year and meet it in one lump, sometimes with interest for late payment. If you take one action from this post, it is to find out early whether you need to make payments directly in your country of residence.

Social security is a separate question with a different answer

This surprises even people who have thought about the tax.

Social security contributions are governed by an entirely different set of international agreements from income tax. A tax treaty tells you nothing about which country’s social system you belong to.

Within the EU and EEA there are coordination rules, and under bilateral social security agreements between other countries there are equivalent mechanisms - typically a certificate confirming you remain in one country’s system while working in another, which prevents contributions falling due in both. Where such a certificate applies, obtaining it is important and is usually the employer’s job to initiate.

Where no agreement exists between the two countries, you can genuinely owe contributions in both, with no relief. That is an expensive outcome and it is worth checking before you go rather than after.

It also matters for what you get: in contribution-based systems, paying in is what gives you healthcare access and pension accrual. Being outside the local system while living locally can mean no public health cover, which folds back into public versus private healthcare.

Your employer’s problem, which becomes your problem

Here is why the answer is so often no.

Permanent establishment. An employee working in another country can, depending on their role and activities, create a taxable presence for the company there - meaning corporate tax registration, filings, and potentially tax on profits attributed to that presence. The risk rises sharply for senior staff, anyone with authority to conclude contracts, and anyone generating revenue in that country. Companies take this extremely seriously because the consequences are corporate rather than personal.

Payroll registration. In many countries, having an employee working there obliges the employer to register and operate local payroll, withhold local tax and pay employer social contributions. That is a real administrative and financial burden for one person.

Employment law. You may begin to acquire rights under the law of the country where you work - minimum leave, notice periods, dismissal protections, working-time rules - which can differ substantially from what the contract assumes. Employment protections generally cannot be contracted away by choosing a governing law.

Everything else. Insurance and liability cover that may not extend abroad, data protection rules about where personal data is processed, export controls in some sectors, and professional licensing where the role is regulated.

None of this is the company being difficult. It is why employers who do allow it usually restrict it to a list of countries where they already have an entity, or run it through an employer-of-record arrangement that formally employs you locally on their behalf.

Have the conversation, and have it early

The single worst version of this is doing it quietly and hoping it does not surface.

It surfaces. Through payroll data, through tax filings, through your own residence registration, through an IP address, through a colleague mentioning where you live. And when it surfaces, it surfaces as a compliance problem with your name attached, in circumstances where you have no goodwill to draw on because you concealed it.

Ask properly, in writing, before you plan anything. Be ready for one of four answers: no; yes for a limited period; yes but only in these specific countries; or yes via an employer-of-record arrangement, which usually means your employment formally transfers to a local entity with local terms, local payroll and possibly different benefits.

That last option is increasingly common and worth understanding rather than dismissing. It solves the compliance problem cleanly. It may also change your notice period, your leave entitlement and your pension arrangements, so read what you are being offered.

And you still need permission to be there

Tax and employment are separate from immigration, and having a job does not give you the right to live somewhere.

If you are relying on a visitor allowance while working, be careful: most short-stay permissions explicitly do not permit work, and while enforcement of remote work on a tourist stay is inconsistent, the rule is not. And in Europe the day-counting is less forgiving than people assume - the Schengen 90/180 rule explained sets out why.

The purpose-built answer is a remote-work or digital nomad permit, which exists in a growing number of countries and is designed for precisely this situation: foreign income, local residence, no local labour market participation. What they require and the catch most people miss is in digital nomad visas in 2026, and the broader architecture of permits is in visas and residence permits explained.

Note the boundary these permits police: foreign income is permitted, local clients or local employment usually are not. Worth knowing if you were thinking of picking up a bit of local work on the side.

The freelance alternative

Some people resolve all of this by converting the relationship: instead of remaining an employee, they register as self-employed in their country of residence and invoice their former employer as a client.

That genuinely removes the employer’s payroll and permanent-establishment exposure, which is why companies often prefer it. But it moves the burden to you - registration, social contributions paid in full rather than split with an employer, your own tax filings, no paid leave, no sick pay, no notice protection. Registering as freelance or self-employed sets out what that involves.

There is also a genuine risk to be aware of: many countries actively police disguised employment, where someone is nominally freelance but works for a single client, on their schedule, under their direction. If that describes the arrangement, authorities may reclassify it with back contributions attached. If your former employer is your only client, look at the local rules on this specifically.

What to actually do

Ask your employer first, in writing, before anything else. Find out whether the two countries have a social security agreement and, if so, whether a certificate applies to you. Establish whether you will be tax resident in the new country and whether you need to make direct payments there, since your payroll almost certainly will not do it for you. Check that your immigration status permits the work. And in the first year, pay a cross-border accountant for a couple of hours - this is squarely the situation where that is the best money in the whole move.

Then, once it is set up properly, it really is a good arrangement. The people I know doing this successfully all did the boring compliance work in the first three months and have not thought about it since.

If the answer from your employer is no, that is not the end of it - the routes into a local job are in finding a job abroad, and how the sponsorship side works is in how employer visa sponsorship works.

Country-specific rules on remote work permits, social security agreements and tax treatment are in the visa and tax sections of the country guides - and for the practical experience of how a particular employer or country handled this, the digital nomads and remote work forum is where people who have already negotiated it share what worked.