Almost nobody plans how to employ people abroad. They solve one urgent hire, and three years later that improvised answer has become the company’s international employment structure. Fourteen contractors across six countries, none of it designed, all of it load-bearing.
For most of the last decade that worked, because nobody checked. That assumption has expired. The Netherlands resumed enforcing its rules on false self-employment in 2025 and restored penalties in 2026. In June 2026 the Dutch senate passed a law creating a presumption of employment for anyone paid below €38 an hour, with the burden of proof falling on the company. The direction of travel across the EU runs one way.
So the structure question deserves a deliberate answer. Three things decide it, and most companies never write any of them down: how long the person will be there, what the work actually looks like, and which passport they hold.
The models, minus the marketing
An independent contractor runs their own business and sells you a service. They invoice you, handle their own tax, and carry their own commercial risk. You are a client, not an employer. This remains the right structure for a great deal of work. The enforcement wave is not an argument against contractors. It is an argument against pretending.
