Working Remotely for a Foreign Employer on H-1B or a Green Card: What Rules Allow
By Muntasir Minhaz • Published Aug 19, 2026
On H-1B, you can only work for the employer named on your approved petition. Doing paid work for your old employer back home while you live in the US counts as unauthorized employment, even if you are paid into a foreign bank account. Once you hold a green card, you can work for anyone, including a foreign employer, but you owe US tax on that income.
🛂 H-1B work authorization is tied to one petitioning employer, not to you as a person
💵 A second job, including remote freelance work for a foreign company, needs its own H-1B petition (concurrent employment)
🏠 Working for a foreign employer while physically outside the US on approved leave does not use up your H-1B authorization
📩 Green card holders have open work authorization but must file a full US tax return on worldwide income
⏱️ The IRS substantial presence test can make even H-1B holders US tax residents on worldwide income
H-1B work authorization belongs to your sponsoring employer, not to you
An H-1B visa is not a general permission to work in the United States. It authorizes you to work only for the specific employer that filed your Form I-129 petition, in the specific job described in that petition. This comes from the employer-employee relationship that USCIS requires every H-1B sponsor to prove: the petitioning company must show it has the right to hire, pay, supervise, and fire you, and that this control continues for the life of your employment (USCIS ).
USCIS does not measure your status by how many hours you work or whether there is a conflict of interest. It looks at whether you provided services to any entity that is not the petitioner listed on your approved I-129. That standard applies even if the other entity is a foreign company, the work happens on evenings and weekends, and you are paid outside the US financial system.
Can you keep working for your old employer back home on H-1B
If you are physically present in the United States on H-1B status and you continue performing paid work for your previous employer in your home country, that counts as unauthorized employment. Location of payment does not matter. What matters is that you are rendering services to a company that never filed a petition for you and has no approved right to control your work under US immigration law.
This is the same rule that governs moonlighting for a second US employer. If you want to legally work for a second organization, including a foreign employer with a US office or US legal presence, that employer generally needs to file its own H-1B petition for you, known as concurrent H-1B employment. You can start the second job only after you have a valid receipt notice or approval for that separate petition, not before.
Freelance or contract work for a company outside the US, performed while you are inside the US, is treated as employment requiring authorization
Unpaid work is not automatically safe either if it is the kind of work someone would normally be paid for
Passive income that is not tied to services you perform, such as rental income, dividends, or a sale of property back home, is different from employment and does not require H-1B authorization
Unauthorized employment can jeopardize your current H-1B status and complicate future visa or green card applications, so treat any outside work offer as something to run past an immigration attorney before you accept it.
What changes if you are physically outside the US
H-1B status allows for time abroad, including extended trips, without automatically ending your status, since the underlying petition and approval remain valid. If you are outside the US and working for a foreign employer while you are there, that work is not employment inside the United States, so it does not draw on your H-1B authorization the same way.
The complication is what happens when you plan to return. If you have been living and working abroad for a foreign company for a long stretch while nominally still employed by your US H-1B sponsor, US border officers and your sponsor's own compliance teams may ask questions about whether you are still performing the job your petition describes. Confirm your plans with your sponsoring employer's immigration counsel before an extended remote stint abroad, and keep any reentry documentation your employer provides.
Green card holders can work for a foreign employer, but tax rules change
A green card removes the employer-specific restriction entirely. As a lawful permanent resident, you can work for any employer, anywhere, including fully remote work for a company based outside the US. Immigration law does not require your work to be for a US company once you hold the green card.
Tax law is a separate system with its own rule. The IRS treats lawful permanent residents as US tax residents under the green card test, which means you must report worldwide income on a US Form 1040 every year, including salary paid by a foreign employer, for as long as you hold the green card and until you formally abandon it with Form I-407 or it is otherwise terminated (IRS ).
If your foreign employer also withholds tax in that country, a tax treaty or the foreign tax credit on Form 1116 can reduce double taxation, but you still have to file in the US. Green card holders with more than 50,000 dollars in foreign financial assets also generally need to file Form 8938 under FATCA. Talk to a tax preparer experienced with international clients before you set up ongoing remote work for a foreign company on a green card.
H-1B holders can also become US tax residents even without a green card
Even before you get a green card, working and living in the US on H-1B can make you a US tax resident under the IRS substantial presence test, separate from your immigration status. The test counts your days present in the US: all your days in the current year, plus one third of your days in the prior year, plus one sixth of your days from two years prior. If that total reaches 183 and you were present at least 31 days in the current year, the IRS taxes you as a resident on worldwide income for that year (IRS ).
Most H-1B holders living in the US year-round pass this test quickly, usually within their first year. That means any side income from a home-country employer you are legally allowed to earn, such as passive income or work performed entirely while you were abroad before your H-1B period began, may still need to be reported on your US return once you count as a resident for tax purposes.