Paghe in Macedonia del Nord: un'attività riservata

North Macedonia is a candidate for European Union membership rather than a member, keeps its own currency, the denar, and has two official languages, Macedonian and Albanian, the latter used in municipalities with a substantial Albanian-speaking population. A foreign employer has to settle the language question in the contract itself, and sometimes the question of a dual version.

On the social side, the Public Revenue Office collects income tax and contributions together, through a single payroll return filed before any salary is paid. There is therefore no separate certificate from a pension fund or a health insurance fund.

It is also, among the Western Balkans, the country where access to the accounting profession is most tightly closed. The law on the performance of accounting work reserves bookkeeping and the tasks that go with it, payroll and payroll returns included, to holders of an accountant or certified accountant licence practising within a firm that is itself entered on the register of the Institute of Accountants and Certified Accountants.

The monthly salary return is filed with the Public Revenue Office and validated by it before the bank executes payment of salaries and contributions. A salary cannot therefore be paid independently of its return, which rules out the deferred correction practices common elsewhere and requires the payroll calendar to be built around the mechanism.

Two references identify the company: the economic entity number, issued by the Central Register on incorporation, and the tax number allocated by the Public Revenue Office. The administration asks for both.

The contract is written and signed before work starts; the employee is notified electronically to the health insurance fund and the pension scheme within a short window. Check who, between head office and the local provider, holds the digital certificates needed to file.

That leaves the payslip given to the employee, record retention, the handling of leave and overtime, and then exit: notice, admissible grounds, any severance and deregistration from the social registers. For a foreign employee, the work authorisation is dealt with before any commitment is made. Plan as well for what happens to the electronic filing certificate when a provider is replaced, since access to it conditions the ability to pay salaries at all.

The link between filing and payment is the feature with the widest consequences. Until the monthly return is accepted by the authority, salaries do not leave the account. A payroll calendar designed abroad, with late validation, collides directly with that mechanism.

Company identification then rests on two references that are not interchangeable. The economic entity number shown on the central register extract and the tax number issued by the revenue office answer different purposes, and a file containing only one of them is incomplete.

Depending on the municipality and on the composition of the workforce, Albanian may finally have to appear alongside Macedonian in documents handed to employees. That question is settled before the first hire, not in the middle of a dispute. Official translation of documents forwarded to head office remains necessary in every case, and it is worth budgeting for from the outset.