Outsourcing accounting to the Philippines gets sold as a rate, a talent pool and a time zone. What you take on is a body of Philippine employment and tax-incentive law. It decides when the person assigned to you becomes a regular employee, where they are allowed to sit while they work on your files, and what the seat costs before anyone's margin goes on top.
Three of those rules change how a quote should read. None of the three is a matter of provider policy, and each one is published where you can read it yourself.
After Six Months, the Person on Your Engagement Is a Regular Employee
A Philippine provider cannot treat the accountant assigned to you as an at-will resource. That is fixed by the Labor Code, and the contract you negotiate cannot change it.
Probationary employment shall not exceed six (6) months from the date the employee started working, unless it is covered by an apprenticeship agreement stipulating a longer period, and an employee who is allowed to work after a probationary period shall be considered a regular employee. That is Article 296, formerly Article 281, in the Department of Labor and Employment's renumbered edition of the Code.
Once regular, the person has security of tenure. Article 294, formerly Article 279, says that in cases of regular employment the employer shall not terminate the services of an employee except for a just cause or when authorized by that Title of the Code. The just causes listed in Article 297, formerly Article 282, are all conduct grounds, being serious misconduct or willful disobedience of lawful orders, gross and habitual neglect of duties, fraud or willful breach of trust, a crime against the person of the employer, an immediate member of the employer's family or a duly authorized representative, and causes analogous to those, per the same edition.
The business-reason route is separate, and it is priced. Article 298, formerly Article 283, lets an employer end employment for the installation of labor-saving devices, redundancy, retrenchment to prevent losses or closure, by serving a written notice on the workers and the Ministry of Labor and Employment, the labor department's name in the Code's own text, at least one (1) month before the intended date. Redundancy then carries separation pay of at least one (1) month pay or at least one (1) month pay for every year of service, whichever is higher. Retrenchment, and closures not caused by serious business losses, carry one (1) month pay or at least one-half (1/2) month pay for every year of service, whichever is higher, in the same edition.
That changes what a replacement promise can mean. Moving the person to another client inside the provider's own workforce is not a dismissal, so neither Article 297 nor Article 298 is triggered. Taking them off the payroll is a dismissal, which needs a just cause or an authorized cause, and on the authorized-cause route a month's notice and separation pay as well. A provider who describes removal as instant and costless is describing something the Code does not contain.
Where the Team Sits Is a Condition of the Provider's Tax Incentives
Whether your provider's staff may work from home is capped by statute when the provider is a registered business enterprise inside an economic zone or freeport. The office-versus-home split is therefore a term of the provider's registration, and no staffing preference overrides it.
Section 27 of Republic Act 12066, known as the CREATE MORE Act, rewrote Section 309 of the National Internal Revenue Code. A qualified registered project shall be exclusively conducted or operated within the geographical boundaries of the zone or freeport, and any project or activity conducted or performed outside those boundaries shall not be entitled to the incentives provided in the Act. The exception is narrow: registered business enterprises may institute a telecommuting program as defined under Republic Act No. 11165, including work-from-home arrangements, which shall not cover more than fifty percent (50%) of the total workforce, and shall be subject to the rules and regulations formulated by the Investment Promotion Agency.
That last clause decides who writes the operating rules. The Act names the agencies that grant and administer these incentives, among them the Philippine Economic Zone Authority, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, the Clark Development Corporation and the Cagayan Special Economic Zone Authority, per the same Act. The ceiling is statutory, but the rules under it belong to whichever agency your provider registered with.
Sending people home does not make the shift cheaper, either. Republic Act 11165 defines telecommuting in Section 3 as work from an alternative workplace with the use of telecommunications and/or computer technologies, and Section 5 requires a telecommuting employee to receive a rate of pay, including overtime and night shift differential, and other similar monetary benefits not lower than those provided in applicable laws. The premium for covering your working day follows the person to their kitchen table.
The Wage Floor Moves With the Region, Not the Country
Each region of the Philippines sets its own wage floor. Regional boards issue the orders, so the same job description carries a different statutory floor depending on which city the provider staffs it in.
These are the floors in force for non-agricultural work in the National Capital Region, Central Visayas, the Davao Region and Central Luzon.
| Region | Wage order | In force since | Daily minimum wage, non-agriculture |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Capital Region, which includes Manila and Makati | NCR-27 | 25 July 2026 | P755.00 |
| Expanded Metro Cebu, the Class A areas of Region VII | ROVII-26 | 04 October 2025 | P540.00 |
| Davao Region, Region XI | RB XI-24 | 13 March 2026 | P525.00 |
| Central Luzon, Region III, which includes Pampanga and Clark | RBIII-26 | 16 April 2026 | P600.00 |
None of those floors is static, and the orders behind them arrive in tranches. The Davao rate is mid-schedule and rises again to P540.00 on 01 September 2026, per its own board, while Central Luzon's second step has already landed, lifting the non-agriculture floor in Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales to P600.00 on 16 April 2026, and Aurora's to P560.00, per the board there.
The floor also moves inside a region. Region VII's order sets P540.00 for the Class A cities around Cebu and P500.00 for the cities and municipalities outside them, per that board, so naming the region, or even the province, is not precise enough to price a seat on.
The floor is not the wage, and nobody staffs a US-facing accountant at it. It is the base the rest of the statutory stack is calculated on.
Three Questions to Ask Before Outsourcing Accounting to the Philippines
The law behind each of these is public, so the only thing a provider has to supply is its own position. One that has to go away and check has told you something about how the seat was priced. Put all three to the provider in writing.
- Tenure. Has the person assigned to us passed probation, and if we ask for a change, is that a reassignment or an exit you fund?
- Site. Which investment promotion agency are you registered with, which issuance of theirs governs your work-from-home arrangement, and what share of the people on our account work from home, on whose equipment and over whose network?
- Wage. Which region is this seat in, which wage order covers it, and is the next tranche already inside the rate you quoted us?
Each answer changes what the hourly figure at the top of a proposal actually covers.
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