Employer of Record Bangladesh FAQ

Hiring someone in Bangladesh normally means registering a company first. Name clearance at the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms, a memorandum and articles of association, a trade licence, a local bank account and paid up capital remitted from abroad. That is a four to six week project and it has to finish before your first employee can legally start.

An Employer of Record removes that step. We already hold the entity. Your chosen candidate signs an employment contract with us. We run their monthly payroll in Bangladeshi Taka, withhold their income tax and remit it to the National Board of Revenue, administer their statutory benefits and keep the records for the statutory period. You direct their work exactly as you would your own staff and you receive one invoice.

The division is simple. We hold the employment. You hold the work. Read how our EOR service works for the mechanism step by step.

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You do not need a Bangladeshi company, a trade licence, a local bank account or a resident director. Your candidate becomes our employee under a contract governed by Bangladeshi law, and you contract with us for their services.

You would still need your own entity in three situations. If you must sign local contracts or hold a sector licence in your own name. If you want to own intellectual property through a Bangladeshi company rather than have it assigned to you. Or if your headcount grows to the point where a per employee fee costs more than running your own entity, which for most companies is somewhere north of twenty five to thirty people.

If that is where you are heading we handle company incorporation in Bangladesh as a separate service, and people already employed through us can transfer across with their service dates intact.

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We hold the employment contract, run the payroll, make the statutory filings and carry the compliance liability that attaches to being an employer in Bangladesh. That is what you are buying.

You decide who to hire, what they work on, what the priorities are, how performance is measured and when the engagement ends. We do not manage your people and we do not take a view on your product.

One thing worth being clear about because it surprises people. Because we are the legal employer, an employment claim in Bangladesh is brought against us, not against you. That is the protection. It also means we will not sign an employment contract we consider unlawful, even at your request, because we are the party that would answer for it.

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An Employer of Record employs the person in its own name. You need no legal presence in Bangladesh at all.

A Professional Employer Organisation is a co employment arrangement. You remain the employer of record and the PEO administers payroll, benefits and HR alongside you. That requires you to already hold a registered entity in the country.

The practical test is one question. Do you have a company in Bangladesh? If no, only an EOR works. If yes, a PEO or plain payroll outsourcing is usually cheaper because you are buying administration rather than a legal wrapper. We set the comparison out in full on EOR versus PEO.

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There is no Bangladeshi statute that prohibits the arrangement and no licence specific to being an Employer of Record. Our entity is a normally registered Bangladeshi company that employs people under the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 as amended, withholds tax under the Income Tax Act 2023, and files what any employer files.

Where arrangements do go wrong is when the paperwork does not match the reality. If someone is engaged on a contract for services but is subject to fixed hours, company policy and daily supervision, a Bangladeshi labour tribunal may treat them as a worker whatever the contract is called. That is a real risk and it is why we check the substance of a role before we agree how to engage it.

Be careful of one specific claim you will see elsewhere. An EOR reduces permanent establishment exposure. It does not eliminate it. Anyone telling you the risk goes to zero is overselling.

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The five to seven days covers contract preparation, document collection and identity verification, e-TIN and National ID records, payroll registration and setting up the first pay cycle. It starts when you approve the package, not when you first email us.

For an expatriate the timeline is different and much longer. Your entity must hold BIDA registration before a foreign national can be appointed, an e-visa is obtained at a mission abroad on an employer recommendation letter, the work permit application goes to BIDA within fifteen days of arrival, and an inter ministerial committee approves it after security clearance. BIDA targets around sixteen working days through its One Stop Service portal but security clearance is routinely the bottleneck. Budget five to seven weeks and treat anything faster as a bonus.

Be sceptical of providers advertising one day or forty eight hour onboarding. That is the time to generate a contract, not the time to make someone legally employed and tax registered.

Source BIDA, procedure for work permit application, bida.gov.bd
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That is genuinely all we need for a written quote. We do not require a discovery call, a signed non disclosure agreement or a procurement process before giving you a number.

What you get back is a written quote naming the service that fits, the employment cost including statutory items, the monthly fee and a dated start plan. A specialist in our Dhaka office writes it. Nothing is charged and nothing is signed until that document is in front of you.

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Plenty of companies start with a single hire to test whether Bangladesh works for them before committing further. The per employee fee is the same whether you have one person or five.

Two of our services do have a practical floor. A managed remote team is worth discussing from roughly three people upward because it includes a named local coordinator, and an offshore development centre makes sense at larger engineering headcounts where a dedicated floor and a named HR partner start to earn their keep. Those sit under managed HR services.

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The fee covers the compliant employment contract, monthly payroll processing in Bangladeshi Taka, income tax withholding and remittance to the National Board of Revenue, statutory benefit administration and ongoing HR support.

Billed separately and at cost are the employee gross salary, festival bonuses, provident fund contributions where a fund applies and any insurance you choose to provide. We do not mark those up.

The fee is a flat amount per employee per month, not a percentage of salary, so it does not rise when you give someone a raise. For teams we build a tailored package and volume pricing is confirmed in your written quote. We publish the current rate in one place only, on our homepage, so that there is a single figure to trust rather than several scattered across the site going stale at different speeds.

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This is the question every provider asks on its own FAQ page and almost none answers with numbers. Here is the line by line.

Bangladeshi salaries are normally structured with a basic wage of around sixty per cent of gross and the remainder in house rent, medical and conveyance allowances. Most statutory costs are calculated on basic wage, not gross, which is why quoting a percentage of gross is misleading.

A Worked Example

Worked example on a gross of 100,000 Taka a month with a basic of 60,000. Festival bonus accrues at about 10,000 a month, gratuity at 5,000 a month, and an employer provident fund match if a fund exists at 4,800. That is 19,800 Taka a month on top of gross, or roughly thirty three per cent of basic and twenty per cent of gross, and it drops to about fifteen thousand a month where no provident fund has been constituted.

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We publish this question because almost nobody in this industry does, and it is where clients get hurt. Deposits held past their agreed return date and salary prepayment requirements that appear after signature are among the most common complaints made against global EOR platforms on review sites.

Our position is that you should know the funding terms before you commit, not after. Whatever advance funding applies to your engagement is written into the quote you receive, along with when it is returned. If the quote you are reading does not say, ask us and we will put it in writing.

Ask the same question of every provider you shortlist. Ask specifically what the deposit is, what triggers its return, and how long the return takes in practice rather than in the contract.

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This is the second thing the industry does not publish. Across thirty one competitor pages we reviewed not one stated a minimum term or an exit notice period for the service agreement itself.

Two things matter and they are different. The notice period to end the service agreement with us, and the notice period owed to the employee under Bangladeshi law. The second one is set by statute and cannot be contracted away. It is a hundred and twenty days for a monthly rated worker, which surprises most foreign employers and is the single largest hidden cost in a Bangladeshi exit.

Our agreement is written so that ending it does not strand your people. Where you are moving to your own entity, employees transfer with their service dates and accrued leave intact rather than being terminated and rehired.

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The hidden foreign exchange margin is the least visible cost in global employment. Independent analysis puts undisclosed EOR currency margins at roughly one and a half to three per cent of salary. On a hundred thousand dollar payroll that is fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars a year that appears nowhere on an invoice.

Employee reviews of the large platforms are blunt about it. One review title on a public review site reads that a provider takes two and a half to three and a half per cent of salary in commission while claiming to have no fees.

We are a Dhaka company holding a Bangladeshi bank account. We receive your payment, convert it once through the banking channel and pay Taka locally. There is no second conversion and no internal exchange rate. Ask any provider you are comparing to state their exchange rate policy in writing and to show it on a payslip.

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Every competitor page explains the statutory severance formula. None of them says who is invoiced for it. The answer for every EOR in the market including us is the client, because the EOR is a pass through, not an insurer.

What differs between providers is timing and transparency. There are three models. Accrue monthly so the money is set aside as it is earned. Invoice on exit so you carry the whole cost in one month. Or hold a reserve against a deposit.

The reason this matters is arithmetic. A monthly rated worker on 100,000 Taka with three years of service who is terminated without cause is owed a hundred and twenty days of notice or pay in lieu, plus thirty days wages per completed year or gratuity whichever is higher, plus any accrued leave encashment, all payable within thirty working days. That is comfortably six months of cost arriving at once. Accruing it monthly is the only version of this that does not hurt.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 sections 26, 27 and 30
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Not covered by the monthly fee and billed to you at cost where they apply.

• Employee gross salary, festival bonuses and provident fund contributions
• Laptops, equipment and desk space where you want them provided locally
• Group health or life insurance premiums where you choose to provide cover
• Reimbursed employee expenses
• Work permit, e-visa and BIDA fees for expatriate hires
• Severance and end of service payments on exit
• External legal advice where you instruct us to obtain it

What is not billed separately and should not be anywhere on your invoice is a percentage of salary dressed up as a compliance charge, a currency conversion margin, or a fee for closing an employment that you already gave notice on.

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Rates and thresholds change with each Finance Act and each amendment. We track them and update contracts, payslips and policies rather than leaving you to notice.

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Most guides to hiring in Bangladesh cover pay, leave and notice and stop there. These are the duties that sit underneath and that people discover at the worst possible moment.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 as amended, sections 16, 19, 32A, 90A, 289 and 307
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The Labour Act’s protections attach to a defined class called a worker. Section 2(65) covers skilled, unskilled, manual, technical, promotional and clerical work, and excludes anyone employed in a managerial, administrative or supervisory capacity.

The exclusion is contested. It has been widened and narrowed again more than once, and labour experts argue that it strips long serving office staff of gratuity and provident fund entitlements they have effectively earned. It is nonetheless the version in the Act, and it is the version that governs your contracts.

What this means in practice for a typical Employer of Record hire.

• A software engineer, an accountant, a designer or a team lead in an office role will often fall outside the statutory definition of worker
• The Act’s automatic machinery for notice, severance and gratuity does not attach to them by force of statute
• Their entitlements therefore come from the employment contract, which is why the contract has to be written properly rather than copied from a template

Anyone selling you Bangladeshi employment who has not raised this distinction has not read section 2(65).

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 section 2(65) as amended
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Wages in lieu of notice are permitted on both sides, which is how most exits are actually handled. Paying a hundred and twenty days of salary to end an employment is a real number and it needs to be in your budget from the first hire, not discovered on the way out.

Published notice figures for Bangladesh vary by a factor of four across the market. If a provider has told you thirty days, they are describing a temporary worker or they are wrong.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 sections 26 and 27
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Four different compensation rules apply depending on how the employment ends and they are routinely conflated, including by providers who should know better.

All final dues are payable within a maximum of thirty working days of the employment ending, under section 30.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 sections 20, 22, 23, 26, 27 and 30
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Two sector variants exist and are frequently misquoted as general figures. Tea plantation workers earn one day per 22 days worked and newspaper workers one day per 11. If you have seen a flat figure of 18 or 21 annual days published for Bangladesh, it is an approximation of the 18 day ratio, not a statutory entitlement.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 sections 46, 115, 116, 117 and 118
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This is set by Rule 111(5) of the Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015, not by the Act itself, which is why it is missed by providers who only read the statute. It is a genuine legal obligation and not a discretionary gesture.

Someone with less than one year of service receives a pro rated amount calculated as the annual entitlement divided by 365 and multiplied by days worked. In practice this is the single largest statutory cost after salary and it is why quoting Bangladesh as a country with no employer contributions is misleading.

Source Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015 rule 111(5)
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This is one of the most misreported points in the market, because the rule has been tightened and loosened again and a great deal of published guidance is describing a version that is not in force.

Where a fund is constituted, the standard arrangement is an employee contribution of 7 to 8 per cent of basic wage with the employer matching it, and eligibility beginning after a year of service. Employees may alternatively be enrolled in the government universal pension scheme with a flat monthly contribution and an employer match.

The obligation is conditional rather than automatic. It bites at 100 or more permanent workers and only where two thirds of the workforce request a fund in writing. You will see this reported both as the mandatory provision having been removed and as it having been made conditional. Those describe the same thing.

You will see a figure of 20 or more workers quoted for this threshold on at least one legal commentary site. We could not corroborate it against any credible source and we do not believe it is correct.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 as amended, and published analysis of the provident fund provisions
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Gratuity is defined in section 2(10). It becomes payable on termination without cause, on discharge for incapacity, and on resignation at ten years or more of service, in each case on a whichever is higher basis against the days per year formula.

Two practical points. It is calculated on basic wage, not gross, so a salary structured with a low basic reduces the exposure legitimately. And it should be accrued monthly rather than met from cash flow in the month someone leaves, because at five years of service it is five months of basic wage arriving in a single invoice.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 section 2(10)
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The best known declaration is the one covering the ready made garment sector, which is set in grades and gazetted by the Board. It is the figure most people mean when they say the Bangladesh minimum wage, and it is revised periodically rather than annually.

That figure does not apply to software engineers, accountants or office staff. There is no declared minimum wage for the information technology sector. What governs those roles is the market rate and the employment contract.

Sectoral declarations are reviewed on a three year cycle, so the figure for any sector moves periodically. Take the current declaration from the Board rather than from a guide.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 and the Minimum Wage Board declarations in force
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• Section 100 sets the ordinary day at 8 hours, extendable to 10 under the conditions in section 108
• Section 102 sets the ordinary week at 48 hours with a maximum of 60 including overtime, and an annual average that must not exceed 56 hours a week
• Section 108 sets overtime at twice the ordinary rate of basic wage plus dearness and ad hoc allowances

The working week in Bangladesh is commonly Sunday to Thursday with Friday as the weekly rest day, and many employers run a five day week. Providers publishing 40 hours a week for Bangladesh are describing a common commercial practice, not the statutory limit.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 sections 100, 102 and 108
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Where notice is given after childbirth the entitlement can run up to 120 days from delivery. Eligibility requires a qualifying period of service with the employer.

Most published guides to hiring in Bangladesh state 112 days or 16 weeks, which is the older entitlement. A couple state 180 days, which was never correct at all. If you are budgeting parental cover from a competitor’s country guide, check it against section 46 rather than trusting the number.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 section 46 as amended
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Section 4 sets the periods. The extension for skilled workers is available where the quality of work could not reasonably be assessed within the original period. Confirmation should be issued in writing and the date tracked, because an unconfirmed employee who continues working is treated as confirmed.

We track probation and confirmation dates as part of HR administration and flag them to you before they expire rather than after.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 section 4
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The structure has been stable for a long time even though the numbers move every year. There is a tax free threshold at the bottom. Income above it is taxed in successive bands at rising rates, from a low entry rate up to a top rate on the balance. A minimum tax applies once income crosses the threshold at all.

Higher tax free thresholds apply to several groups and that structure is durable even though the amounts change. Women and taxpayers aged 65 and over get a higher threshold than the general one. Persons with disabilities and third gender taxpayers get a higher one again. Gazetted war wounded freedom fighters get the highest. A parent or legal guardian of a person with a disability gets a further allowance on top.

Why You Should Not Plan From a Published Rate

Bangladesh has moved to legislating the threshold several years forward rather than year by year, so the figure for any given assessment year is knowable in advance. Ask us for the rates that apply to your year and we will send them with the calculation, or take them from the National Board of Revenue directly.

Source Income Tax Act 2023 and the Finance Act in force for the relevant assessment year. National Board of Revenue
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Late deposit attracts monthly simple interest under the Act, subject to a cap, with criminal exposure under section 315 on top. This is the routine work an Employer of Record exists to absorb.

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This is one of the most common misunderstandings we encounter. The exemption in the Sixth Schedule, Part 1, paragraph 21 covers a schedule of information technology and enabled services categories, and has been widened over time to cover content creation and freelancing generally rather than IT freelancing alone. It does not cover employment income. An employee on your payroll pays tax on their salary at the ordinary slab rates.

Where it does matter is the choice of engagement model, and where the sunset matters is planning. The exemption has always carried an expiry date set by a Finance Act, it has been extended more than once, and it has never been permanent. Check the sunset in force before you build a plan on it. We wrote up how one of those deadlines shapes a hiring decision in our guide to employer costs in Bangladesh.

Source Income Tax Act 2023, Sixth Schedule Part 1 paragraphs 17 and 21, as amended
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Permanent establishment is the concept that lets a country tax a foreign company’s profits because the company has enough of a presence there. Employing someone directly in a country is one of the classic triggers. So is having a person there who habitually concludes contracts in your name.

Using an Employer of Record puts legal distance between you and the individual. The person is our employee, contracted to us, paid by us and on our payroll filings. That removes the most common trigger.

What it does not do is protect you if the substance points the other way. If your Bangladesh based person negotiates and signs deals in your name, runs a customer facing office, or holds themselves out as your local representative, an EOR wrapper will not save you. Roles that are genuinely delivery focused carry far less exposure than roles that are commercially facing.

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A person present in Bangladesh for 183 days or more in a tax year is a resident, and a resident is taxed on worldwide income. Income for services performed while physically in Bangladesh is Bangladesh source income regardless of who pays it, where the payer sits or which currency it arrives in.

The belief that money arriving from abroad through a banking channel is automatically tax free is wrong. The Sixth Schedule paragraph 17 exemption for foreign earned income remitted through banking channels requires the taxpayer to have physically worked abroad. It does not cover remote work performed from a desk in Dhaka. And paragraph 21, the information technology exemption, expressly excludes employment income.

Employment through an Employer of Record removes the ambiguity entirely. Tax is withheld monthly at source, deposited to the treasury and evidenced with a certificate you can file against.

Source Income Tax Act 2023, residency and Sixth Schedule Part 1. The Daily Star analysis of foreign remittance income
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Section 124 of the Income Tax Act 2023 imposes 10 per cent at source on service and revenue sharing income remitted from abroad, deducted by the receiving bank. Bangladesh Bank has confirmed that IT freelancing remittances do not bear source tax, while the National Board of Revenue has confirmed that 10 per cent still applies to non IT freelancers. That split is the position banks operate to.

The income tax exemption has since been widened to cover all forms of freelancing and content creation rather than IT freelancing alone. What we cannot tell you with confidence is whether that switches off the withholding at the bank counter or whether the relief is claimed on assessment. Treat it as the latter until your bank tells you otherwise, and keep the deduction evidence.

None of this applies to salary paid through an Employer of Record. That is employment income, taxed at slab rates through monthly withholding, and it does not touch section 124 at all.

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You send one invoice payment in your currency. We convert once through the banking channel and disburse locally in Taka. Payment reaches a scheduled bank account or, where the employee prefers, bKash or Nagad.

Every employee gets an itemised digital payslip each month showing gross, each allowance, the tax deducted, any provident fund contribution and the net figure. At year end they get the salary and tax certificate they need for their personal return.

Payroll runs on a fixed date and you approve the run before it goes out. Late and inaccurate payroll is the single most common complaint made against global employment platforms in public reviews, and it is the thing we would rather be judged on than any feature.

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Bangladesh operates exchange control under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947 and Bangladesh Bank’s Guidelines for Foreign Exchange Transactions. Dealings in foreign exchange between residents are restricted, and a resident employee’s salary is paid in local currency into a local account.

The main exception runs the other way. A foreign national holding a valid work permit may remit up to 75 per cent of net monthly salary abroad through an Authorised Dealer bank with supporting documentation.

What this means commercially is that somebody has to convert, and the only question is who and at what rate. When a global platform quotes you a salary in dollars and pays your employee in Taka, the conversion happens inside their system at a rate you usually cannot see. When a Dhaka company does it, the conversion happens once at the bank.

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These are hard platform limits, not preferences.

• PayPal does not support receiving money into Bangladesh. Xoom, which PayPal owns, delivers remittances into Bangladesh, which is a different product and a frequent source of confusion
• Wise states in its own help documentation that you cannot send business transfers to Taka. Personal transfers are allowed but capped, with a per transfer ceiling on bank accounts and tighter daily and monthly ceilings on bKash and Nagad
• Payoneer works and is the default rail for Bangladeshi freelancers, but withdrawing to a mobile wallet carries a percentage conversion charge plus a flat fee per transaction, and the government remittance incentive paid on wage earner remittances does not apply to it

Paying salary through a Bangladeshi entity that already holds a compliant local account sidesteps all of it. The money arrives as a normal business payment and leaves as normal payroll.

Sources Wise guide to BDT transfers. bKash Payoneer service page
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The measures, which matter to anyone receiving money from abroad for services performed in Bangladesh.

• Electronic evidence such as platform statements, emails and digital communications is accepted in place of conventional export documentation
• Inward remittances below a declared ceiling are credited without a formal declaration
• Online payment gateway service providers are permitted up to a per transaction ceiling
• Information and communications technology freelancers may retain a share of export earnings in foreign currency accounts, at a higher share than other service exporters
• Dual currency freelancer cards are authorised and mobile financial services access to cross border payments is expanded

The ceilings and the retention shares are set by circular and are revised from time to time, so take the current numbers from your bank rather than from any website. What has not changed is the direction of travel or the two things liberalisation does not touch. It does not change the tax position on income earned from inside Bangladesh, and it does not change whether someone is legally a contractor or an employee.

Source Bangladesh Bank Foreign Exchange Policy Department circulars on freelancer and service export receipts
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A genuine contractor sets their own hours and methods, works on defined deliverables, can work for others, and uses their own tools. If instead the person works fixed hours, follows your policies, reports to your manager daily and does the same job as your employees, a Bangladeshi labour tribunal may treat them as a worker whatever the contract says.

Where contracting is genuinely right, we run it properly under contractor management and agent of record. Identity, address and bank verification before the first engagement date, a localised agreement and statement of work issued in our name, intellectual property assignment written in at signature, payment in Taka with tax deducted at source, and records retained for the statutory period.

We will tell you when we think a role fails the test. That conversation is uncomfortable once and cheap. The alternative is expensive later.

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The exposure has three parts. Employment entitlements the person should have received across the entire engagement, including festival bonus, leave, notice and end of service pay. Tax that should have been withheld, with interest. And penalties, which under section 307 carry a fine plus up to three months imprisonment, with heavier exposure under section 289 where minimum wage has not been paid.

There is a second dimension people forget. A finding that a person was really an employee undermines the argument that you had no presence in Bangladesh, which feeds straight back into permanent establishment risk.

Under an agent of record arrangement we contract the individual in our name and carry the classification risk rather than leaving it sitting with you. That is a large part of what the service is for.

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The sequence. You tell us the reason and the intended date. We confirm what the law requires for that reason, which differs sharply between termination without cause, discharge and dismissal for misconduct. We issue the notice, calculate the final settlement, run the exit documentation and pay the employee. You are invoiced for what was actually paid.

What we will not do is process a termination that is unlawful on its face, because we are the party a labour tribunal would summon. Where a dismissal for misconduct is contemplated we will ask about the process that was followed, because an unfair procedure converts a cheap exit into an expensive one.

Access is revoked on your instruction on the day you specify. Company provisioned equipment is recovered. Tax clearance is issued so the person can file cleanly.

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Employees are offered terms no worse than they already hold. Service dates and accrued leave carry across rather than resetting, which matters because gratuity and leave accrual are both service based and a reset would quietly cost the employee money.

Our fee stops on the transfer date. There is no interim company of ours for you to buy and no transfer fee calculated as a multiple of anything.

Where you also need the entity built, we handle RJSC incorporation as the filing party. Realistically that is four to six weeks end to end for a foreign owned private limited company, and the elapsed time is driven by the bank account and encashment certificate leg rather than by the registry itself.

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There are only two clean outcomes and both are better planned than improvised.

• Transfer. If you have or are building a Bangladeshi entity, the people move across with service intact. This is the outcome we design for
• Termination. If there is nowhere for them to go, the employment ends and the statutory cost falls due, which for a monthly rated worker means up to 120 days of notice or pay in lieu plus service compensation

What we will not do is hold your team hostage to a renewal. If you have decided to leave, the useful conversation is about sequencing so that the statutory clocks run in parallel rather than in series.

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Most global Employer of Record platforms do not own an entity in Bangladesh. They contract with a local partner. That means there is a company in your chain that you have never met, cannot audit, and did not choose, and which can bind you.

This is not theoretical. A publicly posted client account of one global provider describes a local partner engaging external counsel during a termination and agreeing a settlement without informing or involving the client, then invoicing for the settlement and the legal fees.

We are Eicra Soft Limited, operating since 2007 from an office in Dhaka, employing under our own entity. There is no partner in the middle. That does not make us immortal, and no provider can promise that. What it means is that the entity holding your employees’ contracts is the same one you signed with and can look up in the register.

Ask every provider you shortlist one question. Do you own the Bangladeshi entity my people will be employed by, or do you use a partner? Then ask for the entity name.

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The client chose you, decides what you work on and manages you day to day. We are the company that formally employs you, pays you, withholds your tax and keeps your employment record.

Practically, that means your appointment letter, your payslip, your tax certificate and your service record all carry our name. If you need an employment verification letter for a bank, a landlord or a visa, we issue it. If you have a problem with pay, leave or benefits, you come to us and we own it.

This structure is common worldwide and in South Asia it is often called third party payroll. The name is unfortunate because it makes it sound like an agency temp arrangement. It is not. You are a permanent employee of a Bangladeshi company with a written contract under the Bangladesh Labour Act.

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This is the anxiety that dominates every public discussion of third party payroll and it deserves a direct answer rather than reassurance.

You are our employee. Our obligation to pay you arises from your employment contract and from Bangladeshi law. It is not conditional on our commercial arrangements with anyone else. If a client is late paying us, that is our problem to solve, not yours to absorb.

Your payslip shows gross, each allowance, the tax deducted and the net figure. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we fix it in the same cycle where we can and the next one where we cannot, and we tell you which.

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What is legally yours regardless of who employs you.

• Two festival bonuses a year, each up to one month basic wage, once you pass one year of service and pro rated before that
• Casual leave of 10 days and sick leave of 14 days on full wages
• Earned leave accruing at one day for every 18 days worked, capped at 60 days and paid out if unused when you leave
• 13 festival holidays
• Maternity benefit of 120 days
• Notice or pay in lieu on termination and end of service compensation where the law provides it

What depends on what the client has agreed to fund. Group health or life cover, a provident fund, equipment and any allowance above statutory minimums. These are real when they are in your contract and not real when they are in a slide deck. Read your contract and ask us about anything that is not in it.

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The concern behind this question is real and widely discussed. People worry that a payroll company nobody has heard of makes their experience look second tier, or that a future employer will think they were a temp.

In practice you describe the work you did and the company you did it for, which is what an interviewer cares about. Where a background check needs formal employment verification, we provide it with your dates, role and salary. That is usually stronger evidence than a freelancer can offer, because it is a registered company confirming a documented employment.

Be straightforward about the structure if asked. Saying that you were employed by a Bangladeshi employer of record while working full time for a named client is normal and understood.

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Banks in Bangladesh generally want a salary certificate, recent payslips and sometimes a letter confirming your role and start date. We issue all three. For a home loan or a visa application we can add whatever the receiving institution specifically asks for, provided it is accurate.

Your annual salary and tax certificate is issued as a matter of course so you can file your personal return without having to ask.

If a request is unusual, tell us what the institution actually needs rather than what you think they need. We would rather issue the correct document once.

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The most common complaint made about global employment platforms in public reviews is not price. It is that when something goes wrong there is no one to call. Reviewers describe having to wrestle with a chatbot before reaching a person, waits of twelve hours or more for a first reply, and being handed between account managers.

We are one office in Dhaka. You get a named contact, a phone number and an office you can physically walk into on Japan Street in Bashundhara. Working hours are Saturday to Thursday, 9 am to 8 pm Bangladesh time.

If your issue is with the client rather than with us, tell us anyway. Some of it is ours to fix and the rest we can at least route properly.

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If the client ends the engagement, we are still your employer and the statutory process applies. Depending on your role and length of service that means notice or wages in lieu of notice, service compensation where it is due, encashment of accrued earned leave, and all final dues paid within a maximum of thirty working days.

You will also get your tax clearance and your service record so that nothing about the exit obstructs your next job.

Where we can place you with another client we will raise it, but we will not pretend that is guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the settlement.

Source Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 sections 26, 27 and 30
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Here is the mechanism, because a one line assurance that all intellectual property passes to the customer is not an answer.

Work created by an employee in the course of employment vests first in the employer. Under an Employer of Record arrangement the employer is us, not you. So the assignment has to run in two hops.

1. The employment contract between us and the individual assigns to us all rights in work created in the course of employment, including future works, together with confidentiality and, where enforceable, restrictive covenants
2. The service agreement between us and you assigns those rights onward to you, so that ownership lands where it should

Both hops have to exist and both have to be executed at the right time. An assignment signed after the work is created is weaker than one signed at engagement, which is why we put it in at signature rather than bolting it on later.

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Bangladesh went from having no dedicated data protection statute to having one very quickly, and the rules arrived faster than most employers noticed. The Personal Data Protection Act 2026 is the instrument in force and it applies to employee records held about people working here.

What that means operationally for an employer holding Bangladeshi staff records.

• Data classified as confidential or restricted must be stored in Bangladesh. For restricted data and critical information infrastructure held in cloud services, at least one synchronised real time copy must sit inside the country
• Unique identifiers such as National ID, passport and taxpayer identification numbers face heavy transfer restrictions, and large scale transfers of sensitive personal data require notification to the authority
• Transfers to other jurisdictions are permitted only where adequate protection exists, a standard the government has not yet defined by notification
• Significant data controllers must appoint a data officer as the contact point for the national authority

The Act carries administrative fines, with a materially higher ceiling for organisations designated significant data fiduciaries, and it gave organisations a phased runway from the original gazette rather than switching on overnight. Enforcement practice is still developing, so treat the absence of reported cases as a stage rather than as a settled position.

Source Personal Data Protection Act 2026
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Every employment contract we issue carries confidentiality obligations and intellectual property assignment from the date of signature rather than from a later addendum. Where a role justifies it we add specific restrictions on data handling.

On access, our position is that we should hold as little of your material as possible. Repository, cloud and system access is granted by you, under your accounts, on your instruction, and revoked the same day you ask. We do not need a copy of your codebase to run a payroll.

For teams working from our Dhaka office under managed services, the physical controls matter too. Access controlled floor, company provisioned laptops that are asset tagged and encrypted, and recovery of equipment on exit.

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We are a Bangladeshi company employing under our own registered entity, not a reseller fronting for a local partner. Our parent company Eicra Soft Limited has been building and running software and IT services in Dhaka since 2007, and you can look at Eicra directly rather than taking our word for the history.

What we do not do. We do not publish certification badges we do not hold. Client logos we cannot name do not appear here either. Nor do we claim to remove risks that cannot be removed, and where the honest answer to a question is that it depends on your tax adviser or Bangladeshi counsel, we say so on the page rather than in a footnote.

More on the company, every service we run and where the line is drawn on each of them is on our about page.

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