This is an area where I would be cautious about concluding that no Mexican entity or payroll means no IMSS registration. Mexico’s Social Security Law generally makes employees who provide remunerated, personal and subordinate services subject to mandatory IMSS coverage, and the IMSS’s own guidance describes employers as having registration and worker-enrolment obligations. The IMSS also expressly contemplates foreign legal entities with an establishment in Mexico registering as employers, which suggests that Mexican presence can be relevant, but it does not by itself answer the increasingly common situation of a Canadian employer with no Mexican entity or establishment and an employee working remotely from Mexico. In other words, I would not treat the absence of a Mexican entity/payroll as sufficient evidence that IMSS registration is unnecessary; the answer can depend on the employee’s status, the employer’s Mexican presence, and how the employment is structured.
For authoritative confirmation, I would start with the IMSS employer-registration/“Alta Patronal” guidance and then obtain a written determination or professional Mexican employment/social-security opinion for the specific fact pattern. The IMSS’s employer-registration page is here: IMSS – Alta Patronal and Registration in Occupational Risk Insurance. The IMSS also provides a Contact Centre at 800-623-2323 for questions about its procedures and obligations. For your WorkSafeBC compliance exercise, I would document the conclusion specifically as “Canadian employer, no Mexican entity, no Mexican payroll, employee physically working remotely from Mexico”, rather than simply recording “no Mexican operations.”
I hope this helps!
-HRInsider Staff
