Remote work for a foreign company: tax and labor rules for Peruvian freelancers

The starting point: no Peruvian employer, no “planilla”

More and more Peruvians work remotely for companies in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere in Latin America that have no office, branch, or tax ID in Peru. This is different from a foreign company that has a Peru-registered subsidiary formally employing you — in that case, ordinary Peruvian labor law, like bonuses, CTS, and vacation, would apply just as it would to any employee on payroll. This guide covers the more common scenario today: you work as an independent contractor/freelancer for a client with no legal presence in Peru at all.

In that scenario, you are almost always classified for tax purposes as earning fourth-category income (independent professional work), not as an “employee” under Peruvian labor law.

What you DO need to do with SUNAT

• Get a RUC (tax ID) and register as a generator of fourth-category income, even if your only client is abroad.
• Issue electronic fee receipts (recibos por honorarios) for each service rendered. SUNAT does not distinguish whether the payer is Peruvian or foreign: the obligation to issue the receipt comes from your activity, not the client’s location.
• Declare your income as foreign-source income (renta de fuente extranjera) in your Annual Income Tax Return. Even if the money arrives directly in a dollar account or through an international payment platform, you remain a Peruvian tax resident, and that income is added to your other work income to calculate your annual tax. This was directly verified on SUNAT’s page on foreign-source income.

What you do NOT automatically have (unlike an employee on payroll)

Without a registered Peruvian employer, you generally do not have:

• CTS or the July/December bonuses (“gratificaciones”) — see bonuses, CTS, and vacation.
• Paid vacation guaranteed by law.
• Employer-side contributions to EsSalud or your AFP/ONP (because you legally have no employer in Peru).
• Direct protection against unfair dismissal, because the concept of dismissal does not apply where Peru does not recognize a subordinate employment relationship.

It’s important to be honest about this: many people assume that working “full-time and exclusively” for a single foreign client automatically gives them the same rights as a payroll employment contract. Legally, if there is no Peruvian entity formally employing you, that reasoning does not hold under current Peruvian law.

Health and pension: you have to self-enroll

Since there is no Peruvian employer to register you, EsSalud does not cover you automatically. There are two routes:

1. EsSalud Independiente: a health insurance plan designed for professionals, technicians, and self-employed workers, with prices that, according to an EsSalud institutional document, started at S/. 55 for one person under group enrollment (100 or more policyholders); in that same document’s price table, individual enrollment was listed at S/. 65 for the policyholder alone (an amount you should confirm on the current official source, since the document reviewed had no clear update date).
2. Private insurance or an EPS plan, as an alternative or complement.

For pension coverage, you can currently make voluntary/facultative contributions to an AFP or to ONP. Additionally, according to press reports (Infobae, RPP, Expreso) on the pension reform regulation approved in 2025, independent workers who issue fee receipts would move to mandatory affiliation and contributions, phased in starting in 2028, with rates rising from 2% to 5% between 2028 and 2034. This information was not verified by reading the official decree text directly, so treat it as a trend confirmed by multiple press sources rather than a fully verified fact. Check before deciding at AFP vs. ONP.

When this CAN be disguised employment

If your “foreign client” actually operates through a Peruvian company that gives you orders, sets a strict schedule, and supervises you as if you were payroll staff, you might be looking at a case of disguised employment. That figure applies when a Peruvian entity exercises the kind of control typical of an employer; a genuinely foreign client with no presence or intermediary in Peru is a different situation, with fewer protections under current Peruvian law.

Bottom line

Working remotely for a foreign company with no presence in Peru gives you freedom, but shifts onto you the tax responsibility (SUNAT) and social security responsibility (EsSalud, AFP/ONP) that an employer would normally carry. Plan your tax payments and your health/pension coverage as if you were your own “HR department.”