Hey lads,
I've been doing affiliate stuff for 2-3years now and the time has come to finally pass some of the really tedious and monotonous stuff to a couple of VAs so I can free up a bit more time to do more creative things.
Does anyone have any advice about hiring a VA?
I actually have 2 lined up ready to go in the Phillipines but after I spoke to my accountant he advised that I would get in deep shit if I didnt set it up properly and payed them with out going through all the bullshit and costs thats involved with it. I was basically told if the ATO consistently sees money being paid overseas then we will be flagged and audited etc.
Does anyone have experience with this? Basically I want to know about methods of payments. Should I set the VAs up with Paypal and pay them directly there? Go through Fiverr or Upwork (which charge up 15% for their services)?
What do you guys do?
Any info would be awesome.
Cheers
Not Aussie, but this is general advice that applies to most countries: make sure your legal situation is solid. Financial authorities are some of the worst to have to deal with so keep it legal. You can practice tax avoidance through legal loopholes but don't do tax evasion.
As for what others do: In our case, the freelancers invoice us monthly as consultants. We pay over what is best for them. PayPal wins for the Philippines. The invoices are easy then for the accountant. That's the case in Austria, and most of EU.
If you want to pay them without an invoice, then you probably have to hire them, and that's where all the extra costs appear usually. I would always think of them as freelancers that are "project based" even though that project is misc tasks in the company.
Best of luck!
It depends on the country I guess , so definitely listen to your accountant / local experts ... anyways here my take:
I looked a bit into what VAs and what employees are when I hired two from the Philippines, and basically
- not having fixed working times and working from home
- working over their own internet connection and equipment
are two strong points that they're not your employees.
They send me invoices once a month , with bullet points of the work they did , and I pay them via Paypal or transferwise as independent contract workers, same as hiring a developer on upwork for example. For accounting you simply match up the invoice with the amount that left your bank account, and that's it, no mention of employees or any long official procedures.
I agree with Kepe,
Make sure you are doing everything as legal as you can... This industry is already so unknown to most so the last thing you need is to get audited or have some legal issues come back and bite you. I think the saying is you get what you pay for so i would go with someone who is very knowledgeable or even a partner so that you can really increase things!