Employee or contractor
The same company budget spent both ways, and what reaches the person. The answer changes sign across ordinary numbers, so guessing it goes wrong.
Employ them, or pay their invoice
The employment rates come from the cost of hiring guide and the self-employed rates from the freelancer guide, which is where each is sourced and re-checked.
The same number either way: total employment cost, or the invoice you pay.
A self-employed person chooses this. The minimum wage for the year is the default.
Deductible on the general regime only.
On EUR 50,000.00 of company money, the employee keeps more, by EUR 1,298.83 a year. The company spends the same either way; everything that differs happens on the other side.
- Gross salaryEUR 40,456.35
- Employer contributions(EUR 9,543.65)
- Employee contributions(EUR 4,247.92)
- Personal income tax(EUR 7,550.15)
- InvoicedEUR 50,000.00
- Social contributions(EUR 15,534.96)
- Personal income tax(EUR 7,105.59)
Micro-enterprise tax is unavailable or costlier at this turnover, so the general regime is shown.
The answer changes sign across ordinary budgets, which is why this is worth computing rather than assuming: contracting keeps more while micro-enterprise tax is in reach, employment keeps more once it is not, and contracting pulls ahead again past the contribution ceiling. None of that decides whether the arrangement is lawful. If the work looks like employment, the State Revenue Service can treat it as employment and bill for the difference, and the second tab of the ending employment calculator prices that.
Every rate above is read from the ledger in What a Hire Actually Costs You in Latvia, last checked 18 September 2026. That guide carries what a calculator cannot: who each rule does not apply to, what changes above a threshold, when a declaration is required, and what the figure is not.