Paghe in Egitto: un'attività riservata

Egypt is a third country for Europe. An employee sent there benefits from no automatic coordination with their home scheme; how the two interact depends on the applicable agreements and on the nature of the assignment, a question to settle before departure. Payroll is denominated in Egyptian pounds.

Arabic is the language of the administration and of official instruments. Documents issued by the commercial register, the tax authority or the social insurance organisation are drawn up in Arabic, which calls for translation and, depending on their destination, legalisation. An employment contract intended to be relied on before an Egyptian court must exist in Arabic.

Social protection falls to the National Organisation for Social Insurance, with which the employer registers and declares each employee.

Practising the accounting profession on behalf of third parties requires an individual to be entered in the register of accountants and auditors kept by the Ministry of Finance under law 133 of 1951. Payroll taken strictly on its own is not expressly reserved, but firms selling it are in practice on that register.

Egyptian labour law requires a written contract, drawn up in Arabic in several counterparts, one of which goes to the social insurance body. The contract must state the role, the pay and the duration. For a foreign employee a work permit is required, subject to local workforce ratio conditions that must be checked sector by sector.

The tax card evidences identification with the Egyptian tax authority. To it are added the opening of the employer file with the social insurance organisation and the individual affiliation of each employee.

Upstream, the regime of establishment is chosen between an ordinary company entered in the commercial register and a company under the investment regime, placed within the remit of the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI). That choice determines the administrative counterparty for the whole life of the entity.

Wage income tax is withheld by the employer, with periodic remittances and a summary return. Social contributions follow a monthly cycle with a separate body, on a base whose definition is worth examining carefully with the local provider.

Grounds for termination are tightly framed, and in certain cases a committee must be involved beforehand: ending a contract cannot be improvised and must be prepared in advance.

Two designations recur constantly and are regularly confused: the commercial register extract, which establishes the company's commercial existence, and the tax card, which carries its identification with the tax authority. They are two distinct documents issued by two administrations, and neither substitutes for the other.

A calendar trap is layered on top. Commercial register entry is valid for several years, so an extract may be formally current while reflecting a position that has since changed. What matters is the extract's issue date, not the date of the last renewal.

The 2019 personal data protection law is in force but still lacks its implementing decrees. Requiring an Egyptian firm to produce a registration under that statute would mean asking for a formality that is not operational: we rely instead on contractual confidentiality undertakings.