Latvia
Found someone you’d like to hire in Latvia? Great news. In the next few minutes, you’ll learn exactly how you can hire remote talent in Latvia—without paying thousands in fees and spending months talking to lawyers about labor laws.
Country snapshot
CURRENCY
Euro (EUR)
EMPLOYER TAXES
24.09%
PAYROLL FREQUENCY
Monthly
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
Latvian
It’s the fastest way to hire globally
Hiring employees takes months, at the minimum. When you hire with Thera'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’s a lot cheaper
It costs just $0 to sign up for Thera, then $25 per month to hire your contractors with Thera. 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.
It’s more flexible for you & your team
Can be less risky than hiring employees
Hiring employees is a bigger commitment, and can open you up to increased liabilities and regulations. When you hire contractors overseas, your biggest risk is misclassification—but laws surrounding contractor classification are often significantly more straightforward.
Some people want to be employees
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.
You might not have as much control over your talent
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.
Hiring in Latvia can be confusing, but it’s easier when you know what you’re doing. If you want to hire remote talent in Latvia, you have two options: Hire people as contractors, or hire them as employees.
Hire talent as contractors
Hire talent as employees
If you’ve read up until this point, you’ll know that it’s easier, cheaper, and more flexible to hire contractors in Latvia 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 Latvia.
Employer tax
- National Social Insurance and Solidarity Tax (NSIC) for Employment with company registered in Latvia/EU/EEA (split rate)
- National Social Insurance and Solidarity Tax (NSIC) for Employment with company registered in Latvia/EU/EEA (employee eligible for retirement-split rate)
Individual tax
- up to 20,004 EUR - 20%
- 62,800 EUR + - 31%
Paid Time Off (PTO)
Every employee is entitled to paid annual leave. This leave may not be shorter than 4 calendar weeks, not including public holidays.
By agreement between the employer and employee, paid annual leave for the current year may be granted in installments, however, one installment of annual leave each year may not be less than 2 uninterrupted calendar weeks.
Cash compensation for annual leave is prohibited, except in cases where an employment relationship is terminated, and an employee has not used up their paid annual leave.
Public Holidays
There are 11 public holidays.
Sick Days
The duration of sick leave entitlement provided to workers is dependent on how long they have been employed by their employer:
- Employees are generally eligible for 10 days of employer paid sick leave.
- The second are third days should be paid at least 75% of regular wages, and the 4th through 10th days at least 80%.
- The State Social Insurance Agency pays for sick leave from the 11th day through 26 weeks at 80% of the regular wages.
Maternity Leave
Female employees are generally entitled to 112 days of maternity leave: 56 before the birth and 56 after, although the employee may use all 112 days regardless of how many she used before the birth.
Social insurance covers the employee’s wages during leave if she is insured.
Paternity Leave
Fathers are generally entitled to 10 days of paternity leave to be taken with two months of the child’s birth.
Parental Leave
There are no provisions in the law regarding paternity leave.
Other Leave
Childcare leave -Every employee has the right to childcare leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Childcare leave lasts 18 months and may be requested at any time until the child reaches the age of 8.
Study leave - An employee who is studying at any form of educational institution while continuing to work may, in accordance with the collective agreement or employment contract, be granted paid or unpaid study leave. Employees sitting state exams, or are writing and defending theses, are granted paid study leave of no less than 20 working days per year.
Marriage Leave
None.
Bereavement Leave
None.
Termination Process
A contract of employment can be terminated either at the initiative of an employer or an employee.
A contract of employment may also be terminated by expiry of a fixed-term contract, by mutual consent of employer and employee, or pursuant to the request of a third party.
Pursuant to Section 101 of the labor Law, an employer has the right to give a written notice of termination of a contract of employment only on the basis of circumstances related to the conduct of the employee, his or her abilities, or of economic, organizational, technological measures or measures of a similar nature
Prior notice is required to terminate a contract of employment concluded for an indefinite period as well as a fixed-term contract where an employer intends to terminate such contract before the expiry of the term.
An employer, when giving a notice of termination of a contract of employment, shall comply with different time periods, depending on the grounds of dismissal.
The notice of dismissal will take effect either immediately, or 10 days after the notice, or one month after the notice, accordingly to Sections 103 and 101 of the labor Law
In all cases when giving a notice of termination, an employer has a duty to notify an employee in writing those circumstances that serve a basis for the notice of termination of the contract of employment.
The employer has to pay severance pay in accordance with the law.
Notice Period
The notice period in Latvia is:
One month unless the employment contract or collective bargaining agreement provides for a longer period.
Severance Pay
Employees are generally eligible for severance payment as follows:
- up to 5 years’ service: one month’s wages
- 5-10 years’ service: two month’s wages
- 10-20 years’ service: three month’s wages
- 20+ years’ service: four month’s wages
Probation Period
The maximum term of probationary periods is three months.
Working Hours
In general, Latvians work 40 hours per week with 5, 8-hour days.
Overtime
Work exceeding the daily working time of 8 hours is considered to be overtime.
It is interpreted restrictively and, for instance, where the duration of working time is reduced by agreement, overtime is still computed only after 8 hours of work.
The limit of allowed overtime hours is laid down in Section 136 (5) of the labor Law stipulating that overtime work may not exceed 48 hours within a four-week period and 200 hours within a calendar year.
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