What Is an Employer of Record in Argentina?
An Employer of Record in Argentina is an Argentine company that
legally employs your workforce here, registering the employment
relationship and holding the statutory obligations, while you
direct the work. It lets companies based anywhere hire people
in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, or anywhere else in the
country without incorporating or registering as an employer.
Argentina is a better market for this model than it was two
years ago, and the reason is specific. The Ley de Contrato de
Trabajo used to provide that workers hired by one party and
placed at the disposal of another were the direct employees
of whoever used the work. That provision made every arrangement
of this kind structurally fragile. It was replaced in March
2026, and the law now treats the party that registers the
relationship as the employer. The client company keeps a joint
liability, narrowed to what accrued during the period the
employee served it, and with a statutory right to recover
from the employer. Section 8.5 covers the change, the liability
that remains, and the honest caveat about how the courts may
read it.
This Model Works Especially Well When
-
You want one to five people in Argentina, and the cost
and timeline of incorporating would exceed what that
team justifies
-
You are building a software, product, or shared services
function and want to test the market before committing
-
You are hiring from a North American base and want a team
that overlaps your full working day rather than the
edges of it
-
You need to hire before the end of a quarter and cannot
wait on registration, occupational risk cover, and a
fund account
-
You have people in Argentina invoicing you through
monotributo whose arrangement would not survive a
reclassification claim
Komp delivers this as part of a single workforce platform,
so your Argentine employees sit alongside contractors,
EOR workers, and direct employees in other countries,
governed by the same data, workflows, and controls.
How Komp’s Employer of Record Works in Argentina
Komp becomes the legal employer for your Argentine team
members and takes on their statutory liabilities, while
you run the work. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Skip incorporation, the tax identification number, employer
registration, the occupational risk policy that must exist
before anyone starts, and the labor assistance fund account
that covered employers need from 1 November 2026.
Komp already holds all of it.
Komp Activate runs onboarding, including a registered contract,
the correct collective agreement, and a probationary period
within the current statutory limit rather than the one guidance
published before July 2024 describes. Komp PayOps carries
payroll, income tax withholding, and the credit of net pay
to the employee’s own payroll account as the law now requires.
Komp TimeOps records hours against the eight-hour day and
forty-eight-hour week and flags overtime before it is worked.
Compliant offboarding, with notice, severance, and accrued
bonuses settled correctly, closes the loop.
Komp Workforce gives HR, Finance, and Legal a single source
of truth covering your Argentine headcount, accrued aguinaldo
and vacation, severance exposure, fully loaded employer costs,
and compliance alerts, with audit trails built in.
See How It Works →
What Komp Handles Under EOR in Argentina
Komp manages every part of the Argentine employment
relationship so your team can focus on the work,
not the paperwork.
Contributions at the rate that applies to you
Employer contributions run at 20.40 percent for services and
commerce employers above the small-business threshold, and
18 percent for the rest of the private sector holding a valid
small-business certificate. A separate health fund contribution
sits on top, along with occupational risk cover priced by activity.
The employee contributes pensions, the retiree health system,
and a health fund, subject to a ceiling that is reindexed every
month. Komp applies the regime that fits your size and sector
rather than a single blended figure.
Aguinaldo on both statutory dates
The thirteenth month is calculated on the best monthly salary
of each half year and falls due twice, at the end of June
and in mid-December. It carries contributions. Komp accrues
it monthly rather than financing it twice a year.
Vacation, and the higher daily rate
Annual leave runs fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, or
thirty-five consecutive days by length of service. Vacation
pay is calculated by dividing the monthly salary by twenty-five
rather than thirty, which makes the daily rate about twenty
percent higher than an ordinary working day. The 2026 reform
allows leave to be split into blocks and taken outside the
traditional season by agreement. Komp accrues it on the
correct basis.
Payroll, withholding, and the payroll account
Komp PayOps runs payroll on your chosen cycle, withholds income
tax on the current scale, and files the monthly contribution
declaration. Since March 2026, wages must be credited to an
account in the employee’s own name, with no withdrawal limits
and no cost to the employee, and cash and check payment are
no longer valid.
Absence, which is the largest employer-borne liability here
Argentina requires the employer, not the state, to pay full
salary during illness: three months for employees with under
five years of service and six months beyond that, doubling
to six and twelve months where the employee has dependents.
Pay follows any increase granted during the absence. A period
of job protection follows. This is the single most
underestimated cost of employing in Argentina, and Komp
provisions for it.
Termination, notice, and the assistance fund
Severance is one month of salary for each year of service
or fraction over three months, calculated on the best regular
monthly remuneration and subject to a collective-agreement
cap that the Supreme Court has held may not cut the base below
two thirds of actual pay. Notice runs from one to two months
by service, with the balance of the dismissal month on top.
The labor assistance fund that begins on 1 November 2026
changes how this is funded, not what is owed.
See How It Works →
Employer of Record vs Entity Setup in Argentina
| Criteria |
Employer of Record (Komp) |
Your own Argentine entity |
| Best suited for |
One to five people, market entry,
testing demand, nearshore team building
|
Larger permanent teams, local invoicing,
knowledge-economy tax benefits
|
| Legal constraint |
Lawful. Since March 2026, the registering
party is the employer, which removed the
structural problem this model used to carry here
|
None. You employ your own people directly
|
| Client liability |
Joint, but limited to obligations accrued
while the employee served you, with a
statutory right to recover from the employer
|
Not applicable. You are the employer
and the liability is simply yours
|
| Time to first hire |
As soon as the candidate accepts
|
Incorporation, tax registration,
employer registration, occupational
risk cover, and a fund account
|
| Knowledge economy benefits |
Not available. The regime registers
the beneficiary company and its own activity
|
Available if you register and meet
the qualifying criteria
|
| Collective agreement exposure |
Komp determines the applicable agreement
and applies its scale
|
You must identify your own agreement
and track each renegotiation
|
| Compliance ownership |
Managed by Komp with AI-assisted monitoring
and human review
|
Your responsibility across labor law,
social security, occupational risk, and tax
|
| Workforce visibility |
Argentine data unified with your global
workforce on one platform
|
Often a separate local payroll provider
and a separate HR system
|
8.5 Article 29, and What Changed in March 2026
This section exists because the single most important
fact about hiring through this model in Argentina
changed in March 2026, and almost no published
guidance reflects it.
Here is the previous position. The Ley de Contrato de
Trabajo provided that workers engaged by one party
to be supplied to another were considered direct
employees of the party using their services.
Read literally, this meant that a client could be
deemed the employer of someone it had never hired,
with full seniority and severance obligations attached.
This was why careful advisers regarded this model
in Argentina as structurally weaker than those
in neighboring markets.
That text no longer exists. Article 29 was replaced
in March 2026 and now provides that workers are the
direct employees of whoever registers the employment
relationship, notwithstanding that they were engaged
with a view to supplying their work to another company.
The user company is jointly liable for labor and social
security obligations, but the statute narrows that in
two ways: it reaches only obligations accrued during
the time the employee worked for that company, and
the user company may recover what it pays from the
principal obligor.
WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE
-
The employer is the registering party:
your company is not deemed to have hired someone
it did not hire, and no seniority transfers to you
-
Joint liability survives:
an employee or the tax authority can still pursue
your company for what accrued while the employee
served you, and no contract between two companies
removes that
-
The exposure has a boundary:
it runs only for your service period, so taking
on someone with long prior service does not
make you liable for all of it
-
Recovery is statutory:
the right to recover from the employer is
written into the article rather than depending
on your indemnity clause
Two honest caveats belong here. The first is that
leading Argentine labor doctrine regards the new
article as an unconstitutional weakening of worker
protection, and challenges are live. Trial courts
continue to apply the principle that the substance
of a relationship prevails over its documentation,
so a client that directs an employee exactly as
it directs its own staff, with no separation of
any kind, can still face an argument that it is
the real employer. The statute has reduced that
risk substantially. It has not reduced it to nothing.
The second is that this is a labor rule, and it
says nothing about tax. Whether your activity creates
a taxable presence in Argentina is a separate question
that turns on what the role does, not on who runs payroll.
The route that does not work is the temporary staffing
regime. Argentina licenses temporary work agencies,
which must register and post a substantial bond,
but the statute confines them to genuinely transitory
needs drawn from a closed list, such as covering an
absent employee or an extraordinary short-term increase
in activity. An open-ended software role is not on
that list. A provider offering to place permanent
staff under that regime is using the wrong instrument.
Komp employs your Argentine team as an ordinary
registered employer, which is what the law now
contemplates. If you want to compare providers,
ask any provider which article it believes makes
it your employee’s employer, and listen for whether
the answer is dated before March 2026.
8.6 Employer of Record Cost in Argentina
EOR pricing in Argentina varies by provider, service
scope, and team size. The comparison worth running
is not the fee alone. It is the fee against incorporation,
local accounting, occupational risk cover, and the cost
of a reclassification claim in a jurisdiction with
an unusually active labor bar.
Argentina is widely modeled wrong in both directions.
Employer contributions are commonly quoted at 24 to
27 percent when the statutory rates are 20.40 and
18 percent. Meanwhile the employer-paid absence
liability, which can reach twelve months of full salary,
is almost never modeled at all. Budget around 1.40
times base salary as a steady-state accrual including
the thirteenth month and occupational risk cover,
before provisioning for severance and absence.
| Cost line |
Who pays |
How it behaves |
| Employer contributions |
Employer |
20.40 percent for services and commerce
employers above the small-business threshold,
18 percent for the rest of the private sector
with a valid small-business certificate.
Covers pensions, the retiree health system,
family allowances, and the employment fund
|
| Health fund |
Employer and employee |
An employer contribution on top of the
unified rate, with a separate employee
contribution. The employee side is
subject to the monthly ceiling
|
| Employee contributions |
Employee |
Pensions, the retiree health system,
and the health fund, together around
17 percent, applied up to a maximum
contribution base that is reindexed monthly
|
| Occupational risk cover |
Employer only |
Mandatory. Priced contractually by activity
and claims history as a percentage of payroll
plus a fixed amount per worker, with office
and software work at the low end
|
| Aguinaldo |
Employer |
Calculated on the best monthly salary of
each half year and paid twice, at the end
of June and in mid-December.
Carries contributions
|
| Vacation |
Employer |
Fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, or
thirty-five consecutive days by service,
paid at the monthly salary divided by
twenty-five rather than thirty
|
| Paid absence |
Employer |
Three or six months of full salary by service,
doubling to six or twelve months where
the employee has dependents, with pay
following increases granted during the absence
|
| Severance |
Employer |
One month per year of service or fraction
over three months on the best regular monthly
remuneration, subject to a collective-agreement
cap that may not cut the base below two thirds
of actual pay. Notice of one to two months
sits on top
|
| Labor assistance fund |
Employer |
From 1 November 2026, a monthly contribution
on the same base as employer pension contributions,
at 2.5 percent for smaller employers and
1 percent for others, funding severance
rather than replacing it
|
| Union contributions |
Mainly employee |
Set by the applicable collective agreement.
Solidarity contributions from employees
not in the union are capped at 2 percent of pay
|
WHAT SHAPES YOUR PRICE
-
Employer size and sector:
the difference between the 20.40 and 18 percent
regimes turns on your billing level and activity
-
Collective agreement:
the agreement covering your sector sets pay scales
and benefits, and many technology roles sit outside
one entirely, which is a determination rather
than a choice
-
Absence provisioning:
the employer-paid illness liability is the largest
variable in Argentine employment cost
and is rarely quoted
-
Seniority:
severance and notice both scale with service,
and vacation entitlement steps up at five,
ten, and twenty years
-
Integrations and reporting:
HRIS, ERP, and finance system connections
WHY EOR DELIVERS STRONG ROI
-
Faster revenue:
your Argentine hire starts without waiting
on incorporation, registration,
and occupational risk cover
-
Lower overhead:
no local accountant, no contribution filings
to run, no in-country HR staff
-
Lower risk:
current law applied from the first payroll
in a jurisdiction that has changed it
twice in twenty months
-
Less admin:
one platform, one invoice,
one partner for Argentine employment
Request Your Custom Argentina Pricing
→
Who Should Use an EOR in Argentina?
Companies nearshoring from the United States and Canada
Argentina sits one to two hours ahead of United States Eastern time and does not observe daylight saving, which gives a stable, near-complete overlap with the North American working day. Combined with the highest English proficiency in Latin America, that is the core of the case for hiring here.
Companies building engineering and product functions
Argentina has the deepest software talent pool in Spanish-speaking Latin America, a strong public university engineering pipeline, and a mature services export industry. Software, product, data, and design roles are where hiring concentrates and they fit this model cleanly.
Companies that need to move before a deadline
Two reform laws and a partly struck-down emergency decree have left a compliance picture that changes faster than most internal teams can track. The labor assistance fund alone requires an account in place before 1 November 2026. Using a provider that already holds these obligations removes a class of work you would otherwise be doing twice a year.
Companies with people invoicing them through monotributo
Engaging Argentine individuals through the simplified tax regime is extremely common and works where the relationship is genuinely autonomous. Where it is not, the exposure is unusually asymmetric: because the individual invoices the foreign company directly, there is no local registered employer to absorb a claim, and the foreign company is the sole defendant. Converting through an EOR closes that.
HR and finance leaders who want the real number
Costs modeled on the contribution regime that applies rather than a blended figure, the employer-paid absence liability made visible, consolidated invoicing, and audit-ready records for every employee.
Why Komp Is Different from Generic EOR Providers
Many providers can put an Argentine employee on payroll. Komp is built as workforce infrastructure, combining AI intelligence, payment infrastructure it owns outright, and human governance, so you can grow in Argentina with confidence.
AI Agent Swarms with human control
Autonomous agents continuously check payroll, contribution rates, collective agreement scales, accrued bonuses, and regulatory change. Recommendations are surfaced for review before anything is executed: autonomous intelligence, human control.
Dated today, not to 2023
Argentina rewrote its labor law in July 2024 and again in March 2026, and part of an earlier emergency decree was struck down in between. We will tell you which instrument governs any rule we state and when it took effect. In a market changing this fast, that is the difference between advice and folklore.
The deadline handled before it arrives
The labor assistance fund starts on 1 November 2026 and needs an administrator, an account, and an identifier in place first. Komp has that done for the employees it carries.
Komp runs its own entity network and owned payment rails rather than subcontracting to local partners, so your employees are paid on time, and your data stays in one system.
Komp Activate, Komp Workforce, Komp TimeOps, and Komp PayOps connect hiring, workforce records, time, and pay across Argentina and 150+ countries.
Argentine Employment Compliance: What Global Employers Must Manage
Argentine employers answer to the labor authority and its inspectorate, the tax and customs agency that collects social security, the occupational risk system, the unions that administer collective agreements, and the labor courts. These are the areas that matter most, and how Komp covers them.
Which law is in force today
Three instruments are commonly cited, and they do not say the same thing. The December 2023 emergency decree had its labor chapter challenged and struck down, and the appeal has sat with the Supreme Court since. The July 2024 Ley Bases amended the probation period, reduced the penalty regime for unregistered employment, and authorized a severance fund. The March 2026 modernization law went further, amending dozens of articles including Article 29, the rules on how wages are paid, working time arrangements, and the severance base. Guidance that cites only the decree, or stops at 2024, is wrong on specifics that matter.
Probation, where most guidance is two years out of date
The probationary period is six months, not the three months still published on most country pages. A collective agreement may extend it to eight months for employers with six to one hundred workers and to twelve months for employers with five or fewer. These are maximums and cannot be extended by individual agreement. Getting this wrong in either direction is costly: assuming three months forfeits a lawful period, and assuming twelve without qualifying creates an unlawful dismissal.
Collective agreements, which bind whether you joined or not
Agreements are negotiated by activity between the representative union and the employer chamber, then approved by the labor authority, after which they bind every employer and worker in that activity and territory regardless of union membership. The applicable agreement follows the employer’s principal activity rather than the employee’s job title. Many technology and professional roles sit outside any agreement, but that is a determination made on the facts, and it is genuinely litigated. The 2026 reform ended the automatic survival of expired agreements, so a significant round of renegotiation is under way.
Paid absence, the liability nobody quotes
The employer pays full salary during illness for three months where the employee has under five years of service and six months beyond that, and those periods double to six and twelve months where the employee has dependents. Pay must follow any increase granted during the absence, and a further period of unpaid job protection follows. The 2026 reform tightened the notification and certification rules and allowed the employer to require examination by its own doctor, but it did not shorten the entitlement.
How wages must now be paid
Since March 2026, remuneration may be denominated in national or foreign currency, which is a real change from the prior position. It must be credited to an account in the employee’s own name at a bank or recognized provider, on penalty of nullity, with no withdrawal limits and no cost to the employee. Cash and check payment are no longer valid ways to pay wages.
Working time and overtime
The limit is eight hours a day and forty-eight a week. Overtime carries a fifty percent surcharge on weekdays and Saturday mornings and a hundred percent surcharge at night, on Saturday afternoons, and on Sundays and holidays, within monthly and annual caps. The 2026 reform introduced the option of establishing an hours bank and compensatory rest days by written agreement, subject to reliable timekeeping, and revised the rules governing the averaging of working hours and rest periods between shifts.
Severance and the labor assistance fund
Severance is one month of salary per year of service or fraction over three months, calculated on the best regular monthly remuneration of the last year. A collective-agreement cap applies, but the Supreme Court has held that it may not reduce the base below two thirds of actual remuneration. Notice periods range from one to two months, depending on the length of service, in addition to the remaining days in the month of dismissal. From 1 November 2026, covered employers will fund part of this obligation through an individual account administered by a regulated manager. The funds will remain locked for six months from the date of the first contribution and will be available only if the employment relationship has been registered for at least twelve months. The fund changes the financing, not the entitlement.
Vacation and the twenty-fifth
Leave is fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, or thirty-five consecutive calendar days by length of service. Vacation pay is calculated on the monthly salary divided by twenty-five rather than thirty, which lifts the daily rate by about a fifth. The 2026 reform shortened the notice period, allowed leave to be split into blocks of at least seven days, and permitted allocation outside the traditional season by agreement.
Worker classification, and why the risk sits with you
Rendering services raises a statutory presumption of employment, which the 2024 reform qualified for genuine professional and project arrangements documented through invoices and banking channels. The presumption is still decided on substance: exclusivity, fixed hours, supervision, integration into your organization, absence of other clients, no capital or tools, and no risk of result. Where a foreign company engages an Argentine individual directly, there is no local registered employer standing between it and a claim, which makes direct contractor engagement the most exposed structure available here.
Currency and getting money in
Bringing funds into Argentina to meet a payroll is routine. The restrictions that remain bite on money leaving, including dividend remittance and payments to related parties, rather than on inbound flows. The gap between the official and parallel exchange rates, which dominated planning for years, has effectively closed. Any guidance built on a large parallel-market premium is describing a market that no longer exists.
The Argentine Cost Model That Is Wrong in Both Directions
Published guidance on Argentina overstates the contribution rate and omits the largest employer-borne liability, which is paid absence.
Start with contributions. Employer contributions are 20.40 percent for services and commerce employers above the small-business threshold and 18 percent for the rest of the private sector holding a valid certificate, with a health fund contribution on top. The 24 to 27 percent figure that appears on most country pages reflects superseded architecture and overstates the cost of every hire. Now the other direction, which is larger. Argentina places the cost of sickness on the employer rather than the state: full salary for three months where the employee has under five years of service and six months beyond that, doubling to six and twelve months where the employee has dependents, with pay following any increase granted while the employee is away. A single long absence by a senior employee with dependents can cost a full year of salary with no work performed and no state reimbursement, and it is almost never modeled. Add the vacation rule, where pay is calculated on a twenty-fifth of monthly salary rather than a thirtieth, and the thirteenth month paid across two dates, and the realistic planning figure is around 1.40 times base salary before severance and absence provisioning. The practical step is to ask any provider two questions: which contribution regime it is applying to your entity and why, and how it provisions the employer-paid illness entitlement. A provider quoting a single blended percentage has answered neither.
Employer of Record Coverage Across Argentina
Argentine employment law, social security, and income tax are national, so the obligations are identical wherever your team sits. What changes by province is the talent market, the cost base, the provincial turnover tax position, and which collective agreements are active locally.
Employer of Record in Buenos Aires
The capital and surrounding province hold the great weight of the professional market, covering software, finance, media, and the headquarters functions of most multinationals operating in the country. The deepest talent pool and the highest salary base.
Employer of Record in Córdoba
The country’s strongest engineering market outside Buenos Aires, anchored by a large public university system, with established software, automotive technology, and aerospace-adjacent employers.
Employer of Record in Rosario
Agricultural technology, software, and logistics, supported by a substantial university population and a cost base below the capital.
Employer of Record in Mendoza
A growing nearshore services market with a strong quality of life draw for relocating professionals, alongside established agribusiness and wine industry employers.
Employer of Record across the interior
Tucumán, Salta, Bahía Blanca, Mar del Plata, and the Patagonian provinces, where remote professional hiring has grown and energy, mining, and agribusiness concentrate.
Wherever your Argentine team sits, Komp registers the employment relationship, applies the correct collective agreement, runs payroll with the right withholding, credits net pay to the employee’s own account, holds occupational risk cover, and accrues aguinaldo and vacation on the correct basis, so adding a new location never adds new compliance work for you.
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