EasyStaff Helps Italian Businesses Cut Payroll Expenses

Due to the long pandemic, many professionals learnt to work remotely, and long distance is not a barrier anymore. Workers realized that remote work is not necessarily working from home, but also abroad. Teams join calls from different countries and time zones, manage projects and achieve business goals.

Today young Italians choose to leave Italy and found their businesses in the West due to a heavy tax load, ageism and conservatism at home. In 2021 top 3 emigrant destinations for Italians were Argentina, Germany and Switzerland. From 2010 to 2018 182,000 university graduates left Italy.

Adaptation to working remotely, youth fleeing en masse and staff shortage for STEM-cycle jobs make employers search for desired candidates overseas. The result is two-fold. On the one hand, founders move abroad for better candidates all together. Even the Italian government is sponsoring boot camps overseas. On the other hand, companies that stay tend to set teams up abroad. Although this is a workable option for small and medium businesses, it poses certain difficulties for business owners. Hiring locally may still seema safer and easier solution.

Some of the difficulties arise due to the tendency of business owners to hire ‘those like them’. Indeed, it is a natural consequence of cultural matching that they hire primarily local or remote Italians. When hiring, founders and HR professionals not only pay attention to skills, but also evaluate how suitable a candidate is to the existing team on the whole. Apart from the cultural code, there is also the affinity bias that contributes to managers hiring ‘those like them’. Last but not least, language proficiency is key in candidates. Speaking Italian fluently - and preferably, as a mother tongue - is a must-have to Italian managers.

Yet cultural differences and a potentially insufficient language level resolve over the course of work. Managers and teams get used to each other and become a powerful machine that moves business forward. What may not be as easy to manage is a legal financial relationship with the remote team. In EasyStaff, the freelance management platform, we know what difficulties and obstacles related to payroll taxes expect companies in Italy.

First, Italian job seekers are looking for un posto fisso, a single job for the lifetime. In Italy workers are protected by the government, and firing an underperforming employee is not easy. Second, the employee and the employer must sign an official contract, detailing everything from vacation to termination provisions. Third, in Italy employers are tax agents for employees, i.e. responsible for payroll tax payment. The role is necessary for both long-term and short-term contracts.

It has been calculated that an Italian employer on average pays about 50% in tax for every 1,000 EUR of salary, i.e. 500 EUR go in tax. If you are a small startup founder, it is likely that paying high taxes and delivering a desired un posto fisso is not possible for you. In addition, HR management may be extremely demanding, as labor relationships in Italy are closely monitored and strictly regulated by the government, and navigating through the red tape requires tons of resources and time. A reliable solution may be hiring Italian-speaking teams in countries with lower cost of living.

As mentioned above, the founder aims at building a team that shares a language and a culture. Where can a Rome-based startup find remote specialists that speak Italian but are not Italians citizens?

Countries where Italian is spoken and where cost of living is lower than in Italy, are Malta, Egypt, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Philippines and Tunisia. Below is the comparison of average IT salaries there and in Italy.


Italy 1,881 EUR to 5,572 EUR
Romania 745 EUR to 2,813 EUR
Malta 1,426 EUR to 4,255 EUR
Egypt 138 EUR to 435 EUR
Croatia 912 EUR to 2,146 EUR
Bosnia & Herzegovina 534 EUR to 1,856 EUR
Philippines 11,823 EUR
Tunisia 294 EUR to 1,250 EUR


It is clear that IT professionals live in low-cost countries and their average salary is lower than in Italy. To structure a secure financial relationship with remote specialists, the right solution is EasyStaff. We are a freelancer management platform, and working with the platform is a simple and safe method to manage your remote teams with a service contract.

What does EasyStaff let you do in Italy?

1. Hire Italian-speaking specialists with a service contract from any country.
2. Hire non-residents - natural persons and avoid VAT/PIT.
3. 100% legally hire Italian-speaking specialists in low-cost countries.

There is no doubt that companies benefit greatly when teaming up with non-resident specialists through a service contract. Instead of 65% payroll tax that companies pay for every employee in Italy only 22% VAT is paid. The worker will pay payroll tax themselves. For example, a Lithuanian freelancer will pay a 15% payroll tax at home. Furthermore, VAT can be optimized with EasyStaff, as the platform doesn’t require this tax. The commission is 39 EUR per payment or starting at 4%, depending on the user’s choice.

EasyStaff is a freelance management platform to send money abroad to remote specialists. It allows companies to work with foreign contractors globally through a B2B contract with a legal entity in Lithuania. Every payment is 100% legal, and companies and freelancers receive compliant closing documents.

In essence, the advantages of using EasyStaff are the following:

• working with specialists with a service contract instead of a full-scale labor contract;
• cutting HR management costs;
• avoiding VAT and hiring remote professionals in countries with a lower cost of living through a service contract.

Consider the following case. A team from Milan wants to work with a freelancer from Bosnia. To legally avoid the role of a tax agent, the founder sends money to EasyStaff and works with the platform with a B2B contract. The company signs a contract with EasyStaff, and the platform signs a contract with the desired specialist. In this case, a labor contract-based relationship with an employee is replaced with a B2B contract with a mediating service, i.e. EasyStaff. The platform charges 39 EUR per money transfer or a 4% commission, depending on the user’s choice. Both parties receive closing documents. The company receives closing documents from a B2B contractor, i.e. EasyStaff, and the Bosnian freelancer gets their documents from the platform like from a client. The Italian team optimizes payroll taxes to its maximum. The freelancer has an opportunity to legally declare their income.

We guarantee timely money transfers in USD, EUR, RUB & UAH and legally accurate closing documents. If you want to learn more about the service and speak to our representative, leave a request on our website. We will reach out to you as soon as possible. Before you leave, check out our blog with tons of useful material.

https://medium.com/@easystaff/easystaff-helps-italian-businesses-cut-payroll-expenses-e2638b11f40f