No visa. No sponsorship. They never leave their own country.

No. US immigration law applies to work performed within the United States. The definition is at 8 CFR 274a.1(h). A person who lives and works in Manila or Johannesburg and never enters the country is outside that definition entirely, so there is no visa, no petition and no sponsorship. It stops being true the moment they travel to the US for work, even for a week, and at that point it becomes an immigration question and you should take advice.

USCIS ties the I-9 requirement to people hired in the United States. The obligation sits inside the same part of the regulations that defines employment as work performed within the country, so work done entirely abroad does not trigger it. This is a conclusion drawn from the regulatory definition rather than a sentence USCIS has written in those words, so if your position is finely balanced, ask your attorney.

For services performed outside the United States, no. The IRS states that income from sources outside the United States is exempt from nonresident alien withholding under section 1441(a) and is normally not required to be reported on an information return. The test is where the services were performed, not where you are or where the money is sent from.

Generally no. 1099-NEC reports nonemployee compensation, and the IRS instructions direct payers to Form 1042-S for US source income paid to a nonresident alien rather than to a 1099. Where the services were performed abroad the income is foreign source, so neither form is generally in play. The document that does the work is the W-8BEN, signed before the first payment and kept with your records. Plenty of US companies issue a 1099 to a foreign contractor anyway, out of caution or because their bookkeeping software does it automatically. Reporting more than you have to is not usually a problem, but it is not the requirement, and it is worth your accountant knowing which of the two you are doing and why.

This is genuinely unsettled and anyone telling you otherwise is out of date. Three things are true at once as of September 2026. The 2024 Department of Labor rule is still in the Code of Federal Regulations at 29 CFR 795. The Department said in May 2025 that it would no longer apply that rule’s analysis in its investigations, and uses its older economic reality fact sheet instead. And a rescission was proposed in February 2026, with comments closing that April, which has not been finalised. The IRS common law test is separate again and has not changed. In practice: paper it properly, behave consistently with the paper, and watch for the final rule.

Possibly, and that is a question for that country’s law and the relevant treaty, not for US guidance. There is no US government page that answers it and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we will do is look into the specific country before you sign and give you what we find in writing, so you are asking your advisers a narrow question instead of an open one. For a properly drawn contractor engagement with a single individual it is usually a short conversation, but it is your conversation to have.

We do not. You do. We source, screen and test the person, put them in front of you, and you contract them direct. There is no entity in the middle taking a cut of their pay every month and no employer of record you have to keep paying for. We charge a one-off placement fee when you hire, and after that the relationship is yours. We will give you the contract pattern and the W-8 to go with it.

$3,500 per hire as a flat fee, or $3,000 per hire from five hires up. It is the same fee whatever the role pays, so hiring a good developer does not cost you more than hiring an administrator. Nothing is due upfront, there is no deposit and no retainer, and you pay when your hire actually starts. After that there is nothing ongoing: no monthly percentage, and nothing deducted from their salary.

We replace them at no cost, for six months from their start date.

Seven days from your brief to three vetted candidates ready to interview. That is a shortlist, not a longlist, and if we cannot put three in front of you that are worth your time we will say so rather than pad it.

Five steps, and they clear all five before you see them: skills assessment, English test at C1 or above, video interview, background check, and a technical or trade check for the role. Our own people do it, in our own offices in Manila, Johannesburg, Dhaka, Dublin and Birmingham, so somebody on our payroll has met every person whose CV reaches you.

The Philippines, South Africa, Colombia, India and Bangladesh.

Never. Not a fee, not a deposit, not a charge for a job and not a deduction from wages. We are paid by the employer and only by the employer. If anyone has asked a worker for money in our name, tell us and we will deal with it.