Hiring Employees in Argentina

Can a Foreign Company Hire in Argentina Without a Local Entity?

Yes, in practice, and it is the first structural decision to get right. Search "how to hire in Argentina" and nearly every result is a payroll platform selling you a subscription; the legal picture is more interesting. There are four routes.

(a) Through your own Argentine entity. You incorporate a subsidiary (usually an SRL or SA) or register a branch, and that entity employs the team. This is the durable route for any company that intends to operate in the country: full control of the employment relationship, clean payroll, no intermediary. It requires the entity to exist first. Our Doing Business in Argentina guide covers the vehicles and timelines, and our company formation service handles the setup.

(b) Through an employer of record (EOR). A local company registers the worker as its own employee and assigns them to you for a fee. Fast, and useful before you have an entity. The 2026 reform actually clarified this triangle: under the amended Article 29 of the Employment Contract Law, workers are considered direct employees of the party that registers the relationship, and the user company is jointly and severally liable for labor and social security obligations accrued during the period the worker actually serves it. In plain terms: the EOR structure is legally recognized, and you remain on the hook alongside the EOR for the period you use the worker. An EOR is a bridge, not a shield.

(c) Through independent contractors. Lawful and common for genuinely autonomous work, and the reform narrowed the presumption of employment where real non-dependent arrangements are documented with invoices or bank payments. It remains the most litigated structure in Argentine labor law, and misusing it is the classic way foreign companies buy themselves a retroactive employee. Section XIII covers it.

(d) Direct foreign payroll, no local presence. Putting an Argentine resident on your home-country payroll with no Argentine registration is the weakest structure: unregistered-employment exposure, no local compliance trail, practical payment friction. We steer clients away from it.

Choosing among them. If you are testing the market with one or two hires for a defined period, an EOR is reasonable. If you are building a team, revenue or anything you would call an operation, incorporate. If the work is genuinely project-based and independent, contractors are legitimate. Before signing with an EOR, answer four questions: who directs the employee day to day; what happens to the employee when your contract with the EOR ends; whether an assigned workforce creates tax-presence questions for you; and how employee data will flow to your headquarters. The answers usually make the entity decision for you.

Before the First Employee Starts

Hiring formally requires the employer to exist administratively before day one. The sequence, assuming a local entity:

(a) Employer registration with ARCA (the Tax and Customs Collection Agency). Under the 2026 reform, registration of the employment relationship with ARCA is sufficient to evidence it for all legal purposes; no other agency may require an additional registration.

(b) Registration of the hire before the start date (the alta temprana). The worker must be registered before they begin working, not after.

(c) Work-injury insurance (ART). Coverage with a workers' compensation insurer is mandatory from day one; premiums vary by activity risk and insurer.

(d) Mandatory collective life insurance for the payroll.

(e) A salary bank account in the employee's name. Under the amended Article 124 of the Employment Contract Law, monetary remuneration must be paid, under penalty of nullity, by deposit into a bank account in the worker's name.

(f) Pre-employment medical examination.

(g) Determination of the applicable collective bargaining agreement and job category, which fixes the wage floor for the role (Section III).

(h) A payroll provider or local accountant to run monthly filings and contribution payments.

(i) The personnel file: identity and tax data, contract documents, and for RIFL candidates, the evidence of prior status that eligibility will later depend on (Section X).

None of this is exotic, but the order matters: several steps have lead times, and an employee who starts before registration is precisely the exposure the framework is built to punish.

Governing Law and the Collective Agreement You Did Not Choose

Two layers govern every Argentine employment relationship.

The first is statute: the Employment Contract Law No. 20,744 (LCT), as amended most recently by the Labor Modernization Law No. 27,802, plus the working-time statute (Law 11,544), the workers' compensation regime and social security law. The LCT is protective by design: ambiguity is read in favor of the worker, and most employee rights cannot be waived by contract.

The second layer is the one foreign employers routinely miss: the collective bargaining agreement (CBA, convenio colectivo). CBAs attach by the employer's activity, not by choice or by union membership of the individual employee. The applicable CBA sets minimum wage scales by category, working conditions and agreement-based charges, and it applies automatically. Practical consequences: the CBA scale, not the statutory minimum wage, is usually the real wage floor; and the reform capped agreement-based contributions payable to signatory unions at 2% of remuneration, while the statutory 6% employer contribution to the health insurance system (obra social) remains. Identify the CBA before pricing the role. It is the difference between a budget and a guess.

A timing note that colors everything in this guide. Law 27,802, enacted in 2026, rewrote large parts of Argentine employment law. It was litigated immediately; an injunction briefly suspended several titles and was later lifted, and constitutional challenges remain pending. The framework described here is the one in force today, on the date shown at the top of this guide.

We analyzed the full reform in our note on Law 27,802.

Employment Contracts and the Six-Month Trial Period

The default contract is indefinite-term, and it does not require a written instrument to exist: an unwritten relationship is still an employment contract, just one where the employer has surrendered control of the evidence. Everything else must fit a statutory box, and the boxes that depart from the default (fixed-term, part-time, remote work) do require writing.

In every case we put the contract in writing, in Spanish (bilingual versions work, with Spanish prevailing), covering: role and category under the applicable CBA; compensation and its components, distinguishing fixed from variable; place and mode of work, including remote arrangements; confidentiality; assignment of intellectual property, which for technology companies should be explicit even where statutory default rules already favor the employer for inventions made within the scope of employment; equipment; and internal policies incorporated by reference. For a foreign parent, add where the employment data goes and on what legal basis it travels.

The trial period is six months. During it, either party may end the relationship without severance for dismissal without cause, and under the amended Article 231 the employer owes no notice during probation. After probation, dismissal triggers notice and severance (Section XI).

Fixed-term contracts need an objective reason tied to the task and a written term; used as a rolling default they convert into indefinite employment. Part-time work is capped at two-thirds of the full-time schedule with proportional pay.

Salary, Bonuses, Equity and Benefits

Argentine compensation stacks statutory components on top of the agreed wage:

• a.The CBA scale or the agreed salary, whichever is higher, is the monthly base. A national statutory minimum (SMVM) exists and is updated periodically, but for covered roles the CBA scale is almost always the operative floor.
• b.The thirteenth salary (aguinaldo or SAC): one-twelfth of annual remuneration, paid in two half-yearly installments. Treat it as a permanent 8.33% on top of stated salary.
• c.Paid vacation on the LCT's longstanding seniority scale (14 to 35 calendar days; Section VII), plus paid public holidays.
• d.Currency. Under the amended Article 105 of the LCT, salary may be agreed and paid in national or foreign currency, and under Article 124 it must be paid by deposit into the employee's bank account. Dollar-denominated salaries are therefore legally available, but they are a structuring decision: fix the currency of account versus currency of payment, the exchange-rate reference, how statutory items (SAC, severance base) are computed, and how payroll reporting handles the conversion. We negotiate these clauses regularly for foreign employers; done casually, they become dispute material.
• e.Variable compensation. Bonuses, commissions and performance pay are common and enforceable; items paid with habituality can enter the remuneration concept and, through it, contribution and severance math, so structure and documentation matter. Discretionary bonus language should actually be discretionary in practice, not a fixed payment wearing a discretionary label. The reform also allows CBAs to adopt "dynamic salary" components tied to individual performance or merit.
• f.Equity. Stock options, RSUs and phantom plans from a foreign parent are widely used for Argentine teams and sit at the intersection of labor, tax and foreign-exchange rules. The labor-law question is whether plan value becomes remuneration for local purposes; the answer depends on design. Plan rollouts to Argentina deserve specific advice, not a translated US grant letter.

What an Employee Actually Costs

Budget in layers on top of gross salary. The structure, using the ranges from the regime itself rather than false precision:

Read it this way: an employee with a gross salary of 100 typically costs the employer somewhere in the 130s once contributions, the SAC accrual and ART are loaded, before any RIFL relief; the employee receives roughly 83 before income tax. The single biggest lever on the employer side in 2026 is RIFL (Section X), which for qualifying hires cuts the covered contribution subsystems from ordinary rates to a combined 5% for four years. It does not erase obra social, ART, life insurance, CBA charges or the FAL, so it lowers the loading substantially without making it disappear.

Two budgeting mistakes to avoid: pricing a covered role off the statutory minimum instead of the CBA scale, and forgetting that severance exposure accrues with every month of tenure (Section XI). Cost the exit when you cost the hire.

Working Time, Overtime, Vacations and Leave

The general rule is unchanged by the reform: eight hours a day, forty-eight a week (Law 11,544). What the 2026 reform added is flexibility in how hours are arranged, not a longer ordinary day:

• a.Hour bank and compensatory time. Under the new Article 197 bis, employer and worker may voluntarily agree regimes to compensate overtime with equivalent rest (hour banks, compensatory days off), and CBAs may average working time across periods.
• b.Mandatory rest. Any such arrangement must respect a minimum rest of 12 hours between shifts and a weekly rest of 35 hours.
• c.Overtime beyond the applicable schedule is paid at the classic surcharges (50% on ordinary days, 100% on weekends and holidays).

Vacation runs on the LCT seniority scale: 14 calendar days (under 5 years of service), 21 (5 to 10), 28 (10 to 20) and 35 (over 20). The reform kept the summer vacation window but allows the parties to schedule leave outside it, requires a summer-season vacation at least once every three years, and permits splitting leave into tranches of no fewer than seven consecutive days.

Other leave. Paid sick leave is employer-funded for statutory periods that scale with tenure and family responsibilities; maternity leave (90 days under the general regime) is funded through social security rather than by the employer; and short statutory leaves cover marriage, birth, bereavement and exams. Sector CBAs frequently improve these floors; check yours.

Remote and Hybrid Work

The practical default for foreign companies hiring Argentine talent is remote work, and here the 2026 reform created a transition every employer should plan around.

Remote employment is currently governed by the Remote Work Law No. 27,555, with its statutory duties around written agreement, equipment and expenses, reversibility and the right to disconnect. The Modernization Law repeals Law 27,555 effective January 1, 2027, after which remote work will be governed by the general rules of the LCT and whatever the parties and CBAs provide.

What we recommend today: hire remote employees under contracts that comply with Law 27,555 while it lasts, but draft the remote-work clauses to stand on their own (equipment, expense allocation, workplace, schedule, disconnection, data security), so the contract remains coherent when the special statute falls away in 2027. Employers with existing remote contracts should diary a review for the transition.

Payroll Compliance, Records and Insurance

Monthly operation is straightforward once set up: payroll is run, employee withholdings and employer contributions are declared and paid through ARCA's systems, and payslips are issued. In practice every foreign employer does this through a local payroll provider or accountant; the legal risk is not in the arithmetic but in categories (wrong CBA, wrong classification) and timing (late registration).

On records, the reform simplified the architecture: ARCA registration is the registration; pre-existing labor books must be preserved for ten years; and employment certificates under Article 80 of the LCT can be issued digitally, with the obligation deemed met where the data is fully available on the social security agency's site.

On insurance, two covers are mandatory for every employee: ART (work-injury) and the collective life insurance policy. Workplace health and safety duties attach through the ART regime and sector rules.

RIFL: The 2026 Hiring Incentive

Treat RIFL as what it is: a temporary, opt-in benefit that materially changes hiring math during a one-year window, not a permanent feature of the system. Implemented by Decree 315/2026 under Law 27,802, the Labor Formalization Incentive Regime reduces the covered employer-contribution subsystems to a combined 5% (2% allocated across the pension system, the National Employment Fund and family allowances; 3% to INSSJP/PAMI) for the first 48 months of each qualifying relationship, against ordinary rates that can reach 26% or more. To be precise about what it does not do: it does not reduce the entire payroll burden to 5%; obra social, ART, life insurance, CBA charges and (from November 2026) the FAL continue.

The conditions are strict and formal:

(a) the relationship must be initiated and registered with ARCA between May 1, 2026 and April 30, 2027;

(b) the worker must fit one of four profiles: no registered employment as of December 10, 2025; unemployed for at least six months; a former monotributista; or coming from public-sector employment;

(c) the employer must itself have registered with ARCA on or after December 10, 2025, which in practice tailors the regime to newly arrived employers, exactly the reader of this guide;

(d) RIFL hires cannot exceed 80% of total payroll; and

(e) the employer must opt in expressly through ARCA, in time; there is no retroactive access for months in which the option was not exercised.

RIFL is not cumulative with the general contribution reduction of Article 76 of the law; you choose one per worker. Document each hire's eligibility profile at signing, because that evidence is what an audit will ask for. And carry the litigation caveat: no injunction currently suspends the regime, but the constitutional challenges to Law 27,802 have not ended. We covered the mechanics and the judicial backdrop in our note on Decree 315/2026.

For a foreign company incorporating in 2026 and hiring its first Argentine team inside the window, RIFL is frequently worth five figures per employee over four years. It belongs in the plan from the first offer letter.

Ending Employment: Notice, Severance and the Real Exit Cost

Model the exit before the hire. Argentine termination cost is a function of tenure and remuneration, it accrues silently, and it crystallizes the day you terminate.

During probation (first six months): either party may terminate without cause, with no severance and, under the reform, no notice.

Resignation and mutual termination carry no severance, though mutual-termination agreements have form requirements and are frequently used for negotiated exits.

Dismissal with cause requires an injury serious enough that the relationship cannot continue, communicated in writing with the facts stated; courts construe cause strictly, and a failed cause defense converts into a without-cause termination with everything that follows.

Dismissal without cause is lawful and priced. The components:

(a) Severance under Article 245 LCT (as amended): one month of the redefined base per year of service or fraction over three months. The base is the normal, regular and habitual monthly remuneration; "habitual" means items received in at least 6 of the last 12 months, with variable pay averaged on the more favorable of the last six or twelve months; the SAC, vacation pay and non-monthly bonuses are excluded. The base is capped at three times the average CBA salary, with a floor of 67% of the computed remuneration so the cap cannot hollow out the entitlement.

(b) Notice or pay in lieu: after probation, one month (under five years of tenure) or two months (over five), plus integration of the dismissal month where notice is not worked to month-end.

(c) Final settlement items: accrued salary, proportional SAC, accrued untaken vacation, earned variable compensation, and the Article 80 employment certificates.

(d) Special protections: dismissals connected to pregnancy, recent marriage, union representation or discriminatory grounds carry aggravated consequences and, in some cases, reinstatement exposure. These are the cases to lawyer before acting, not after.

The reform's predictability tools matter to a foreign headquarters: severance is now the sole remedy for ordinary dismissal without cause (the stacked-fines era is closed); labor claims adjust at CPI plus 3% per year instead of open-ended judicial indexation; and adverse judgments can be paid in installments (up to six for large companies, twelve for smaller ones).

A worked illustration (simplified, for orientation only): an employee with a habitual monthly remuneration of ARS 3,000,000 and 3 years and 4 months of service, dismissed without cause with pay in lieu of notice mid-month, is owed roughly: Article 245 severance of 4 x 3,000,000 = 12,000,000; one month's pay in lieu of notice plus integration to month-end; proportional SAC on all of it where applicable; and accrued vacation. Before CBA specifics and tax, the exit costs on the order of five to six months of salary at three years' tenure. That is the number to have in the model on hiring day.

The FAL: Pre-Funding Terminations from November 2026

The reform created the Labor Assistance Fund (FAL) to pre-fund termination liabilities. Its entry into force, originally June 1, 2026, was postponed to November 1, 2026 by Decree 408/2026. From that date, employers contribute monthly (1% of remuneration for large companies, 2.5% for micro, small and medium enterprises) into an account that is the employer's own separate, designated, non-attachable patrimony, managed by CNV-authorized administrators, covering terminations of registered workers with at least twelve months of seniority. The Executive may raise the rates to 1.5% and 3% with bicameral approval, and CBAs may build individual-capitalization termination funds on the construction-industry model.

Read the FAL as cash-flow smoothing, not as a change in what a termination costs: the severance regime of Section XI stands, and where the fund is insufficient the employer remains liable for the difference. From November, budget the contribution as part of the monthly load in Section VI.

Contractors and the Misclassification Line

The reform redrew the employee/contractor boundary in the employer's favor, but less than the headlines suggest. Under the amended Article 23 of the LCT, the presumption of an employment contract does not apply where there is a genuine contracting of works, professional services or trades without dependency, documented with the corresponding invoices or with payment through bank systems. The operative words are "without dependency": invoicing removes the presumption in qualifying independent arrangements; it does not prevent a court from finding employment where subordination is proven on the facts.

A contractor relationship holds when the substance is independent: the person controls how and broadly when the work is done, bears some economic risk, can serve other clients, is not inserted into your hierarchy, and the arrangement is papered and paid like the services deal it claims to be. It fails when a full-time, exclusive, directed team member invoices monthly like clockwork; no invoice stack fixes that, and reclassification brings retroactive registration, severance, SAC, vacation and contributions.

Our posture is conservative: use contractors for genuinely independent work, paper the independence, and revisit the file when the engagement quietly becomes a job. For the common reverse-flow case (Argentine professionals invoicing a foreign company for exported services, with its foreign-exchange and payment mechanics), the analysis runs through services-export rules as much as labor law; our Doing Business in Argentina guide covers the currency side.

Hiring Foreign Nationals Into Argentina

Everything above concerns hiring Argentine residents. Moving a foreign employee into Argentina adds an immigration layer (residence and work authorization through the migration authority, with MERCOSUR nationals on a favorable track) on top of the same labor framework, which applies fully to work performed in Argentina regardless of the parties' nationality or the contract's stated law. Expat packages also raise dual-payroll, tax-residency and social-security questions that deserve their own analysis. We keep this section deliberately short: if this is your case, treat it as a distinct workstream.

Pre-Hire Checklist

Before extending an offer in Argentina, confirm:

(a) the hiring structure: own entity, EOR with its Article 29 joint liability understood, or genuinely independent contractor;

(b) the employer entity exists and is ARCA-registered;

(c) the applicable CBA and category, and the scale wage for the role;

(d) the full loaded cost (Section VI), not the gross salary;

(e) RIFL eligibility, and a calendar entry to opt in through ARCA before the window closes;

(f) the contract type fits its statutory box, in writing, with intellectual-property, confidentiality, remote-work and currency clauses deliberate;

(g) registration before the start date, ART and life insurance in place, salary account opened;

(h) a payroll provider engaged for monthly compliance;

(i) modeled termination exposure at one, two and three years of tenure; and

(j) for contractors, documented independence, real invoices, bank payments.

Getting one of these wrong, most often (c), (d) or (i), is what turns a routine hire into a dispute. For related reading, see our Doing Business in Argentina guide and our analysis of Law 27,802 and the RIFL regime. To discuss a hiring plan, contact Jarsun, Ferreira & Calvo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a US or foreign company hire employees in Argentina without a local entity?

Yes: through an employer of record, or through genuinely independent contractors. Under Article 29 of the LCT the EOR that registers the worker is the direct employer, and your company is jointly liable for obligations accrued while the worker serves you. For more than a bridge hire, incorporate; the entity route is cleaner and usually cheaper at scale.

Do I need a written employment contract in Argentina?

An indefinite-term employment relationship exists with or without writing; fixed-term, part-time and remote contracts require it. Write everything anyway: category, compensation structure, currency, intellectual-property assignment, confidentiality, remote terms. Unwritten means unproven, and unproven runs against the employer.

How long is the probation period in Argentina?

Six months. During it, either party can end the relationship without severance, and the employer owes no prior notice.

Can I pay an Argentine employee in US dollars?

Yes. The amended Article 105 of the LCT allows salary in national or foreign currency, and Article 124 requires payment by deposit into the employee's bank account. Structure the clause properly: currency of account versus payment, the conversion reference for statutory items, and payroll reporting.

How much does an employee in Argentina cost above gross salary?

Plan on roughly 30-40% on top of gross before any incentive: employer social contributions (around 20-30% depending on activity and size), the 8.33% thirteenth-salary accrual, work-injury insurance, life insurance and collective-agreement charges, plus the FAL contribution from November 2026. A qualifying RIFL hire cuts the covered contribution subsystems to 5% for four years, which materially lowers, but does not eliminate, the load.

What is RIFL and does my hire qualify?

A temporary incentive for relationships registered between May 1, 2026 and April 30, 2027: reduced contributions on covered subsystems for 48 months, for four worker profiles (previously unregistered, six months unemployed, former monotributistas, former public sector), available to employers registered with ARCA since December 10, 2025, capped at 80% of payroll, and only if you opt in through ARCA in time.

How is severance calculated in Argentina?

For dismissal without cause: one month of the normal, regular and habitual monthly remuneration per year of service or fraction over three months, excluding aguinaldo and non-monthly bonuses, capped at three CBA average salaries with a 67% floor, plus notice or pay in lieu, integration of the dismissal month, proportional SAC and untaken vacation. Claims adjust at CPI plus 3% annually. Severance is the sole remedy for ordinary dismissal without cause.

Are independent contractors a safe alternative to employees in Argentina?

For genuinely independent work, yes: the reformed Article 23 removes the employment presumption where non-dependent services are invoiced or paid through banks. Where the facts show subordination, courts still find employment, retroactively and expensively. Independence must be real, not just invoiced.

What changes for remote work in Argentina in 2027?

Law 27,555 governs remote employment through December 31, 2026 and is repealed as of January 1, 2027, when the general LCT rules take over. Draft remote contracts today to stand on their own so the repeal does not leave gaps.