How to contract for US companies as EU national

Smaller US based companies are more likely accommodate you, if they like what you bring to the table. Common arrangement is to start a company in the EU and your company will invoice the US company.

Taxes: I am not a lawyer, pay a specialist to confirm this part. You fill in either a W-8 BEN (as an individual) or a W-8BEN-E (as a company) and the company keeps this on their records, which basically says "the US has a double taxation treaty with my country so the US co should not withhold taxes", which for most EU countries is in place. You might have to dig through the specific treaty and find the appropriate section that describes withholding percent on the type of income. Search for information regarding those two forms. IIRC Upwork makes service providers fill and send those forms, or used to back in the day.

Contracting work happening outside US territory by non-US citizens is not taxed in US.

From a US company perspective, you can do your work as an individual or a local registered business entity: you agree to gross terms, and that's what you get, and they have that as an expense.

However, many European countries require you to incorporate (at least a Ltd company) to gain proper "employment" and stop people from using contractor relationship as a tax loophole.

Depending on your country of residence, your tax rates will differ.

Estonia has started to offer completely digital companies, but I am unsure how that fits inwith your goals or legal requirements.

The larger tech companies all have a presence in the EU, could you not contract with those?

(Otherwise, the main issue which comes to mind is double-taxation, you may have to pay income tax in both the US and wherever you are in the EU, as the US seldom has tax treaties with other countries that avoid double-taxation.)

I did contract work for an American company from the EU for 6 months.

I set up a one man company (with unlimited liability ...) and just sent invoices to the American company and they paid to my bank. Then I paid the taxes myself locally.

It is very doable if you got a lead.

Even just applying for US companies who are looking for remote-in-US sometimes works if you have all your ducks in a row (if they don't have to do much to get you on board). I would say opening a one-person company is enough (it is in my experience). Personally I go for a little more complex constructions because it's often quite hard to optimise for tax with the one person structures in the EU (as far as I know them here). Besides signing all kinds of contracts (under US law), I haven't seen many issues.

Aside from directly incorporating a company yourself, there are also payroll firms that will basically take a cut to turn your (possibly international) freelance/contract income into a salary.

It's kind of your own company as a service so naturally it is more expensive than doing everything yourself before considering your time cost/efficiency.

Network did it for me. Many people in different functions in the company won't like the arrangement, so you will need an insider who personally fights to hire you.

The contractor can use a service like gusto.com and boom bob’s your uncle.

A good question. The UK has nearly killed off its contractnig industry with increased IR35 (regulatory) requirements. Given tax hikes pay is rather low too.

I have been at some US companies that had people from Europe working there. They were fully remote companies.

We’re building this for ourselves at Gumroad: Flexile.com

It’s currently SaaS to manage contracts, onboarding, and payments. It will expand over the course of this year into a marketplace.

As far as legal obligations go, that's mostly going to depend on the country you're in, and how they're engaging you. If you're a full-time employee with an unlimited contract, ideally they'd employ you under their local legal entity. If they don't have one, they might use an "Employer of Record" service like Remote.com (never used them myself, and there are other companies that offer similar services).

If, however, you're a "contractor" but with an unlimited contract (or a contracted renewed repeatedly), and potentially a few other things that would give the impression you're an employee, then you might have some issues - I know that Germany will make your life miserable if you're determined to be engaging in "Scheinselbstständigkeit (or arbeitnehmerähnliche Selbstständiger)," or "Bogus self-employment (or quasi-employee self-employed)." The way around that is to file taxes as if you were employed and pay all the taxes that the company would ordinarily pay, which means that you need to account for that in your negotiations, plus the costs of a tax accountant if you're not comfortable doing that yourself. I don't know which country you're in, but it's something to look into.

If you're a genuine contractor who regularly switches companies (or at least multiple regular clients, depending on local law/etc) then I don't think there are any issues that would be specific to the US - you'd have to deal with things like VAT, currency conversion issues, possibly different tax years, etc, etc, but I'd also expect those to be common issues with any local contractor who works with clients in other countries.

> Are there any sites that bring together companies and offshore contractors (not upwork, I'm thinking about niche or expert sites)?

The best you'll likely do on that front is the monthly Freelancer / Seeking Freelancer post on HN. I don't know what kind of success rate people have with those.

Most contracting ends up being through personal relationships though.

> I'm investigating this as being a bit tired with the lack of contract / remote / engineering first culture in the EU.

A little beside the point of the question, but what’s needed to change that culture? Surely, organizing labor is not difficult over there.

TopTal does exactly this - it isn’t easy to get into but the rates are good and they have plenty of us based roles.

https://www.toptal.com/talent/apply

Or my signup link (we both get 100 USD if you start a role):

https://www.toptal.com/BGnO1x/worlds-top-talent