Hire remote accountants from Latin America and you will be quoted an hourly rate. Colombia and Mexico both write payments into the year on top of that rate, and both price the end of a seat by statute rather than by the contract you negotiated. Colombian law goes further, and presumes that every personal work relationship is governed by an employment contract, whatever the paper calls it.
Those rules are public, and they decide what a provider can honestly promise you. That includes an employer of record, a company that legally employs the person in their own country while you direct the work day to day. Written answers to these rules are worth more than a reference call.
The Payments a Rate Card Does Not Carry
A quoted rate rests on what the provider pays the person, and where that person is an employee, both countries add mandatory payments to the salary across the year. A provider absorbs them, prices them in, or bills them separately, and you can't tell which from an hourly number.
Colombia Adds a Prima and a Cesantía to Every Year
The prima de servicios is a statutory mid-year and year-end payment, not a bonus anyone decides on. Article 306 of the Código Sustantivo del Trabajo, as modified by article 1 of Ley 1788 de 2016, obliges the employer to pay it at 30 days of salary per year, recognised in two payments, half by June 30 at the latest and the other half within the first 20 days of December, per the Senate's published text of the Code.
The auxilio de cesantía is statutory severance that accrues whether or not anyone is ever dismissed. Article 249 sets it at one month of salary for each year of service, and proportionally for a fraction of a year, payable when the employment contract ends, per the same Code.
Both accrue on the salary the provider pays, and neither is visible in an hourly quote.
Mexico Adds an Aguinaldo, a Vacation Premium and Profit Sharing
The aguinaldo is Mexico's statutory year-end payment. PROFEDET, the federal labour defence office inside the Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, states it as at least 15 days of salary for one year of service, proportional where the person has worked less than a year, and payable before December 20 each year, per PROFEDET's guidance on the aguinaldo.
Paid vacation starts at 12 days after the first year and rises with seniority. The same office says the days must be granted within the 6 months following the anniversary, and that they cannot be settled in money, because the point of them is the rest, per PROFEDET's vacation guidance.
On top of the salary paid during that vacation, the worker is owed a further 25%, the prima vacacional, per PROFEDET on the vacation premium.
Then there is profit sharing, and its deadline falls after the US filing season closes. Workers must be told within 10 days of the employer filing its annual tax return, and where the employer is a company the payment is due by May 30 each year, per PROFEDET's profit-sharing guidance.
The amount tracks the profit the employer declares, but it is not unbounded. The Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social states that the calculation is 10% of taxable income, and that only where that amount exceeds 90 days (three months) of the worker's salary do 90 days of salary become the maximum profit-sharing payment, unless the average the company paid workers in that category over the last three years is higher, in which case the averaged amount is paid instead, per the ministry's profit-sharing compliance guide. That is the provider's obligation rather than yours, which is exactly why it belongs in the conversation about what your rate has to cover.
Colombia Presumes an Employment Contract, Whatever the Paper Says
Article 23 of the Code requires three elements for an employment contract: the worker's personal activity, continued subordination or dependence, and a salary as payment for the service. The subordination limb, as modified by article 16 of Ley 2466 de 2025, is the employer's power to demand compliance with orders at any time as to the mode, time or quantity of work and to impose regulations, maintained for the whole duration of the contract, per the Code.
Read that against a seat that works your hours, on your software, under your reviewer. Article 24 presumes that every personal work relationship is governed by an employment contract, and article 23 adds that once the three elements concur there is an employment contract, which it does not stop being by reason of the name given to it or of other conditions or modalities added to it, per the same Code.
When that presumption holds, the prima and the cesantía above are owed for the time already worked, and unpaid benefits can carry a penalty of their own. Article 65 provides that where the employer does not pay the salaries and benefits owed at the end of the contract, apart from withholdings the law allows or the parties agreed, it owes a sum equal to the last daily wage for each day of delay, capped at 24 months for workers earning more than one monthly minimum wage. Where those 24 months pass and the worker has not begun an ordinary claim, or has filed without a judicial ruling, moratory interest at the maximum certified rate for freely allocated credit runs from the start of month 25 until payment. For workers at or below one monthly minimum wage the article's original text stays in force, and that text sets the same daily-wage sum with no ceiling, per the Code.
Which country's law reaches that question first, and what a finding attaches to, is worked through in the post on offshore contractor misclassification risk. What Colombia supplies is the local answer, and it is that the label on the contract is not the test.
Mexico Registers Anyone Who Puts Staff at Your Disposal
Mexico governs labour subcontracting through a public register, so a staffing provider either appears on it or does not. The Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social states that the Ley Federal del Trabajo, in its articles 13 and 15, requires natural or legal persons who provide specialised services or execute specialised works, and companies providing complementary or shared services inside one corporate group, to hold a registration with the ministry, per the REPSE portal.
The trigger is putting your own workers at a third party's disposal. The ministry describes that as one or more workers carrying out the service at a workplace owned by, administered by or under the responsibility of the contracting party, different from the party they hold their employment relationship with, on a permanent, indefinite or periodic basis, per the same portal.
What may be subcontracted is narrower than most US buyers assume: specialised services or works that form no part of the corporate purpose nor of the predominant economic activity of the party benefiting from them, and that require personnel to be placed at its disposal, per the same portal.
Checking is a search rather than a document request. The ministry says registration is renewed every three years, under the agreement published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 21 February 2024, and that a search of the padrón returns the folio, the entity and municipality, the validity of the registration, and the specific specialised services the contractor is authorised to contract for, per the same portal.
Whether a particular cross-border arrangement sits inside that regime is a question for Mexican counsel, and it is a fair one to put to a provider's lawyers in writing.
Ending the Seat Has a Statutory Price
These prices attach to the local employment contract, which belongs to the provider or the employer of record rather than to you. In Colombia, ending an indefinite-term contract without just cause is priced by article 64. For a worker earning under 10 monthly legal minimum wages it runs to 30 days of salary where service has not exceeded one year, plus 20 additional days of salary for each subsequent year and proportionally for a fraction, per the Code.
At or above that salary band the same article pays 20 days of salary for a first year, then 15 additional days for each subsequent year and proportionally for a fraction, per the same article.
In Mexico, a worker separated from the post without justification may ask to be reinstated or to be paid 3 months of salary as indemnification, along with the benefits still owed, per PROFEDET on dismissal.
A seniority premium runs alongside that. It is 12 days for each year worked, owed when the worker is separated from the post whatever the length of service, with voluntary separation at 15 years or more and death as the other two triggers, per PROFEDET on the seniority premium.
None of those figures is negotiable inside your contract. A provider that promises a free swap is absorbing that price itself, pricing it into your rate, or has not read its own country's rules, and the difference matters in the month you ask for the swap.
The Local Title Is a Local Credential
Both countries call the accounting credential contador público. It is a genuine regulated title at home, and it isn't a US license. It does not change who signs the return, and it does not move responsibility for the file off your firm.
One route crosses, and it crosses for Mexico only. The NASBA/AICPA International Qualifications Appraisal Board holds mutual recognition agreements with a short published list of foreign bodies that includes Instituto Mexicano de Contadores Publicos and no Colombian body, per NASBA on mutual recognition agreements, and what that route does and does not carry is worked through separately. Until an individual has completed that route, read the title as evidence of local training, and leave the review chain standing between their work and your signature exactly where it is.
Five Questions to Put in Writing Before You Hire Remote Accountants From Latin America
Every one of these has a documentary answer, which is what makes it worth asking. Send them before the call so the answers arrive in writing.
- The pay items. Which statutory payments does the quoted rate already carry, naming the prima de servicios and the cesantía in Colombia or the aguinaldo, the prima vacacional and profit sharing in Mexico, and which of them are billed on top?
- The employment status. Who is the legal employer of the person on our work, and if the answer is a contractor, which local test has been applied to a seat that keeps our hours under our reviewer?
- The register. For Mexico, what is the REPSE folio, which services is it authorised for, and when does it expire?
- The exit price. If we end the seat, who funds the statutory indemnity, plus the seniority premium in Mexico, and is that cost inside the rate or invoiced at the end?
- The credentials. Which credentials does the assigned team hold, which of those are US credentials, and who reviews the work above both?
Four of the five have answers a provider can copy out of a file it already keeps. The one that takes thought is the second, and how a provider handles it tells you whether the arrangement was designed or assumed.
What Crossing the Border Changes, and What It Does Not
The clock is the reason Latin America comes up at all, and the destination roundup weighs that against the alternatives, including where each country stands on data-protection adequacy. The employment law above is the part that decides what the provider standing behind the clock can promise.
What does not change is the US side. The duties on the file, the consent your client signs, and the security program your firm runs are the same whichever border the work crosses, which is why the nearshore comparison lands in the same place from the other direction.
Accountably delivers from its own offices in India, so a Latin American team is not something we staff or place, and a requirement for one is not a requirement we fill. If what you need is preparation and review capacity you can grade before your name is on the line, we run a Free 40-Hour Proof Pilot on a fixed block of your own representative work, on your software and your SOPs, through full multi-layer review. Since 2022 the count stands at 30+ placements across 20+ US firms, with a 3 to 4 week ramp and a 30-Day Fit Guarantee that replaces anyone who is not the right fit on your account, free.
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