Hiring in the Dominican Republic can be as easy as a few minutes and a couple of clicks, and as difficult as thousands of dollars and weeks spent onboarding. Below, you’ll learn what you should know about your options.
If you want to successfully hire in
Dominican Republic
, you have two options:
Laws about hiring contractors are significantly more simple in
Dominican Republic
. Onboarding talent takes days, not weeks or months. Both you, the company, and your talent have more flexibility. And in many cases, since you’re remote, the talent you’re hiring is better classified as a contractor, anyway. Of course, it’s not possible in every case, but it’s what we built Panther for.
This is the long route. You can either establish a physical presence with an entity and register as an employer, or you can use an Employer-of-Record (EOR) solution. Odds are, you’ll find using an EOR to be the easier route. Still, using an EOR in
Dominican Republic
is expensive—it can often be $500 per month per employee—and sometimes prone to lengthy onboarding times.
Hiring contractors is normally the easier, faster, more flexible choice—but don’t just take it from us. Below are the specific benefits and drawbacks to hiring contractors in
Dominican Republic
.
Hiring employees takes months, at the minimum. When you hire with Panther’s locally-generated contracts, it’s a matter of days or weeks. This means you can hire the best talent, fast, without losing them to a hellish procession of paperwork.
It costs just $0 to sign up for Panther, then $49 per month to hire your contractors with Panther. If you hired employees manually (or did contracting on your own), you’d likely be on the hook for thousands of dollars each month. Setting up an entity alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Hiring contractors in
Dominican Republic
means you’re generally not on the hook for things like health insurance and paid time off. This makes hiring flexible for you, and it gives your talent more options.
Hiring employees is a bigger commitment, and generally puts you at a bigger risk for legal fees. When you hire contractors overseas, your biggest risk is misclassification—but even then, misclassification penalties are often minimal and just require you to pay off any compensation that the person would have been owed as an employee.
The contractor life isn’t for everyone—some people want the security that being an employee often appears to provide. Though it’s rare, this does happen, and it’s one disadvantage of manage an all-contractor team.
Most countries’ contractor-employer relationship laws stipulate that the employer can’t set fixed working hours, among other things. These laws give contractors more freedom over how and when they do their work than an employee would have. In reality, however, most contractors are willing & able to work on the company’s schedule—it’s a matter of setting expectations beforehand.
If you’re hiring contractors in
Dominican Republic
, you can pay them with Panther in a single click. You won’t need to worry about complicated wire transfers, fees, or currency conversions. We’ll take care of it all. Just make a click and your contractor will get paid in their currency of choice. This is a valuable bonus for talent in countries where the local currency is particularly weak—most people appreciate the ability to receive their payment in stronger currencies.
If you’ve read up until this point, you’ll know that it’s easier, cheaper, and more flexible to hire contractors in the Dominican Republic than employees. Still, there are valid reasons why you might want to hire employees instead. The content below is for you—we’ll cover employer taxes and obligations in the Dominican Republic.
PTO is calculated by the:
There are 13 public holidays.
No paid sick leave.
New mothers are entitled to paid leave of 14 weeks.
New fathers are entitled to paternity leave of 2 days.
No legal requirement.
None.
Employees receive paid 5 days leave.
Employees will receive a paid 3 days leave.
In the event of a termination of a local employee, the employee’s salary must be paid:
“For cause” termination requires evidence of wrongdoing and 48 hours’ notice. If an employer fails to provide evidence or the required notice, he will have to pay severance.
“At will” termination requires longer notice and severance payment.
The notice period in Dominican Republic is:
For at-will termination, notice depends on the employee’s seniority.
After three months, the employee receives 7 days’ notice; after six months, 14 days; after a year, 28 days’ notice.
Severance pay is also determined by seniority.
3 – 6 months get 6 days’ salary
6 – 12 months get 13 days’ salary
1 – 5 years get 21 days per year
Over 5 years get 23 days per year
Probation period is not longer than 3 months.
A workweek is 44 hours based on 8 hours per day for 5.5 days.
Hours worked beyond 8 per day are overtime and paid at +35%, even if the weekly total is still 44.
If the workweek exceeds 68 hours, the extra pay rate is +100%. Night hours are paid at +15%.
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