Employee Expenses

Are they 'employees' of yours, thus making you responsible for all sorts of other 'obligations'?
Or are they more 'freelancers' aka 'Independent Contractors'.

If they are looking for more work please pass along contact info

Those “other obligations” can add up. I have an employee-maid. Not only are there the costs for aguinaldo (mandatory Christmas bonus); “profit sharing” (that seem to be based on revenues, not profit); etc., the accountant who makes the seguro payments is an expense. Then there is the “severance pay” liability that accrues every year.

“Severance pay for a full-time employee equals three months’ worth of wages, in addition to 20 days’ worth of wages for each year the employee worked. This amount must be equal to the most recent salary earned and include accrued benefits as well.”

For years I paid seguro for the maid but, because she could not provide official identification to seguro, she couldn’t get seguro benefits. So in addition to seguro payments I also paid the employee’s medical visits, medications, etc.

And the obligations can come back to bite. About the same time as I hired the maid, I needed yard upkeep done.

My property manager had a guy whom she assigned to various properties. She got him into a routine doing some work on my property. The property manager charged me for his work.

I never told him what to do; the property manager did. If I wanted something specific done, I talked with the property manager who talked with the guy. Sometimes the guy would do it; sometimes the property manager would have someone else do it. I didn’t care. I always got charged for it.

The guy continued to work at other properties, showing up at my place two or three times a week, coming and going as he wished. Although he was not my employee I got to know him and liked him. When he needed some extra money for medications or things, I contributed to paying for it.

The property manager died and an employee took over the business. The arrangement continued.

One day, the guy said he was quitting and demanded severance pay from the first day he did work on my property. He said was going to report me for having been his employer for over 15 years and never paying seguro for him. It was a mess that cost thousands of dollars for someone whom I never considered to be my employee.

Employee relations is not for a faint-hearted gringo.

It is stories like yours which is why I asked. Bummer