Getting Paid in Nepal

Get set up first

• A bank account in your own name at a commercial bank, and a personal PAN (Permanent Account Number) from the Inland Revenue Department. A PAN is free: apply on the IRD’s Taxpayer Portal, then take your citizenship certificate to the tax office you chose.
• Give your PAN to your bank. It’s needed for a dollar card, and the CAN Federation advises having one, with clear records of what you earn abroad, to get the higher foreign-currency limits.

How the money comes in

Ask your bank before you agree a way of being paid, and test it with a small payment first.

• A bank transfer (SWIFT) from your client straight into your account in Nepal: the plain, formal route. Your bank converts it to rupees and records it as foreign income.
• An employer of record: a firm that employs you in Nepal on a foreign company’s behalf and pays a salary. Deel offers this in Nepal. Remote says it can pay contractors in Nepal in some currencies.
• Payoneer: its price list doesn’t name Nepal among the countries for withdrawals in local currency, so money reaches a Nepali bank converted, at 1.2–4%, and an account receiving under US$6,000 in a year pays US$29.95. Check the fee in your account before choosing it.
• PayPal: its Nepal page offers paying and sending only, nothing for receiving pay or withdrawing to a bank here (checked October 2026). Don’t promise a client you can take PayPal.
• Wise: we couldn’t confirm that it pays into bank accounts in Nepal. Ask before you rely on it.

What Nepal Rastra Bank allows

• Foreign currency earned online can be changed into rupees inside the banking system, and banks may pay the rupees into a mobile banking account or wallet (NRB’s arrangement of 2020).
• Since October 2026, freelancers and service exporters may put foreign earnings straight onto a card balance or into a bank account; balances over US$10,000 must go into a bank account. Service exporters may spend up to what they earned abroad plus US$500 a year by card, at most US$10,000 (ICTFrame’s report of the amended circular).
• Since April 2026, a freelancer with foreign income may pay up to US$25,000 a year abroad through banks for the online software and services the work needs, and banks may issue IT prepaid cards of up to US$3,000 a year (B360’s report).
• Never use hundi, the informal money transfer: it is illegal, and people are arrested for it. Nepal Rastra Bank calls using, trading or mining cryptocurrency illegal too.

Why the bank, not a shortcut

Many freelancers are paid into foreign accounts or through third-country companies, and that income is never recorded (Kathmandu Post, 2026). Money that comes in through a bank is income you can show: for a loan, or for the tax clearance certificate a visa needs, which remote workers once found hard to get (Rest of World, 2022).

Tax on what you earn

• Payment from a foreign client for software or IT services, to a resident individual not running a registered business: 5% advance tax when it is received, under the Finance Act 2083 (for 2083/84). The same 5% applies to consultancy, and to social media earnings in foreign currency. The Inland Revenue Department’s notice for this year repeats it (Republica, August 2026).
• Whether that 5% is the whole tax, or you must file a return and pay more on a large income, we could not confirm from the law itself: guides disagree. Check with a tax adviser or your Inland Revenue Office, and file a return every year either way.
• A salary, through an employer of record or a company in Nepal, is taxed on the normal scale, taken from each pay: 1% up to Rs 10 lakh a year, then 10%, 20% and 27% up to Rs 40 lakh, and 29% above.
• IT service exporters, software programming among them, get a 50% concession on their tax until 2084/85, and other export income gets smaller ones. Which applies to you depends on how you are registered: ask an adviser once your income grows.
• The rules change: the rate for IT work for clients abroad was 1% in 2022 and is 5% now. Check every year after the budget (late May).

Contracts and invoices

• Get it in writing: what you will deliver, the rate and the currency, when and how you will be paid, who owns the work, and how either side can end it.
• Send an invoice for every payment and keep it with the bank’s advice of the money received: the records banks and the tax office ask for.
• A contractor has no paid leave, no festival bonus and no provident fund, and can be let go at any time (“the company I work for can fire me anytime”, a remote developer told Rest of World). Save for the gaps between jobs.
• On a fixed price, ask for part up front, or use the platform’s milestones so the money is held before you start.

The scams aimed at beginners

• The task scam: a sponsored Facebook ad promises easy money for liking and sharing, a “coordinator” on Telegram pays a little at first (one victim got Rs 1,000), then asks for a membership fee and bigger deposits to “unlock” better tasks, and disappears. One young man lost Rs 25,000, his rent savings (Kathmandu Post, 2024).
• Of 3,257 electronic fraud cases the Cyber Bureau registered in part of 2024/25, 1,186 were job, online job or loan scams. Nepal Police received 20,526 cybercrime complaints in 2082/83; fake job offers on Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram are rising.
• Never pay to get a job, and never deposit a cheque and send part of it back.
• Never lend your bank account, wallet or freelancing account to anyone, for a salary or a commission: that makes you the “money mule” the police trace, and banks warn that it is unlawful.
• A real employer has a website and people you can look up, interviews you on video, and pays you, never the other way round. Report a scam to Nepal Police’s Cyber Bureau.