Domestic Workers

Why Register At All

If you hire someone to clean your apartment — even four hours once a week — you are an employer under Argentine law, and registration is mandatory regardless of how few hours they work. There's no "it's only a few hours a month" exemption.

The good news is that this is one of the areas where it's really not that difficult. Registration is free, takes an afternoon, and the monthly contribution for a part-time cleaner is currently about ARS 10,000 — a rounding error next to the salary itself. And the 2026 labor reform made the whole thing easier and lower-risk than it was for the previous decade.

The person who benefits most is the worker: registration is what gives her a pension record, an obra social (health coverage), and ART (workplace accident insurance). Historically most of this sector worked informally, and the cost of that lands on the worker, not on you.

What the 2026 Reform Changed

Domestic work in Argentina has always been its own special regime — Ley 26.844, the Régimen Especial de Contrato de Trabajo para el Personal de Casas Particulares. It sits outside most of the general Labor Contract Law. In March 2026 it got its first serious overhaul via Ley 27.802, the Ley de Modernización Laboral (Boletín Oficial, 6 March 2026). Four changes matter to you:

Electronic recibos. Art. 20 of Ley 26.844 now requires the pay receipt to be issued electronically through ARCA's system — the "Personal de Casas Particulares" portal. ARCA implemented this with Resolución General 5850/2026 (BO 21 May 2026). Handwritten receipt books are no longer valid before the tax authority. This is a simplification: you click a button instead of keeping a paper libro de recibos.

Bank transfer is now proof of payment. The same article establishes that the bank record of the payment is sufficient proof that the salary was paid. This is the single most useful change for a foreigner. Pay by transfer, keep the comprobante, done. Cash is still legal, but you still owe the electronic recibo either way — and cash leaves you with a much worse paper trail.

The double-severance penalty is gone. The old Art. 50 doubled the severance owed to a worker who had never been registered. That was the enforcement stick, and Ley 27.802 removed it. Registration is still legally required and an unregistered worker can still claim her rights — but the catastrophic-payout scenario that scared people off is gone. Read that as a reason to stop procrastinating, not a reason to skip it: the worker still loses her pension credits, health coverage and ART if you don't.

Six-month probation. Probation used to be 15 days (with retiro) or 30 days (live-in). It's now six months for all indefinite contracts, either side can end the relationship without cause and without severance during that window — but only if the worker was registered from day one. Skip the registration and you skip the probation protection too. You also can't re-use probation with the same person twice.

A broader labor-regularization scheme (Promoción del Empleo Registrado) came in with the same law, with forgiveness of past contribution debt. Whether household employers qualify is genuinely unsettled — the reglamentary decree doesn't address domestic workers, and it's been publicly argued about. If you have years of informal history to clean up, that's a question for a contador, not a blog.

Registering: One Afternoon

1. Get a clave fiscal nivel 2 at ARCA if you don't have one. See The Argentine Tax System — the same login runs everything. Foreign employers use the same process as Argentines.
2. Log in and go to "Personal de Casas Particulares" (afip.gob.ar/casasparticulares still redirects there).
3. Enter the worker's CUIL. Most of her data auto-fills. Add name, birth date, address, phone, email, her choice of obra social, and her CBU for transfers.
4. Enter the job details: hours per week, remuneration, start date, modality (con retiro / sin retiro, i.e. live-out or live-in), and the work address.
5. Submit and download the constancia de alta. Give her a copy. Pay the first ART premium up front.

If it doesn't work out, the baja is the same portal and can be done same-day.

What It Costs

Two separate numbers: the salary, and a flat monthly contribution to ARCA.

The contribution is fixed by weekly-hours bracket, not pro-rated by the hour. For the under-12-hours-per-week bracket it is ARS 10,088.64 per month as of the August 2026 due date (period July). It's updated twice a year for inflation, in February and August, so check the current table rather than this page. That single payment covers her pension (SIPA), obra social, and ART.

Salary minimums are set by the CNTCP and update several times a year. As of August 2026 the "tareas generales" minimum is roughly ARS 3,734/hour con retiro. In practice, in Buenos Aires, nobody good works for the legal minimum — the market rate for a trusted cleaner in Palermo or Recoleta is a large multiple of it.

A worked example, my own case: a cleaner once a week, four hours a visit, so about 16 hours a month, at ARS 9,000 an hour.

She receives the full 144,000 plus pension credits, health coverage and accident insurance. You pay about 7% on top for full legality. Plus proportional aguinaldo and vacation, below.

The Monthly Routine

Everything runs a mes vencido — you pay in the following month, by the 10th.

1. Pay the contributions in the portal by the 10th: VEP, home banking, QR, or set up débito automático and forget about it.
2. Generate the electronic recibo in the portal and send it to her.
3. Pay the salary by bank transfer to her CBU. Keep the comprobante — that's your proof under the new Art. 20. She can verify everything landed under "Mis Aportes."

Ten minutes a month once it's set up.

The Conversation To Have First

Before you hire anyone, ask these four things. Spanish first, because that's the conversation you'll actually be having.

1. ¿Estás bien con que te pague por transferencia bancaria? — Are you OK being paid by bank transfer? Some people still strongly prefer cash; better to know now.
2. Si te registro en ARCA, ¿tenés algún problema con eso? — Any problem with me registering you formally? Occasionally there is one (another job, a benefit) and it's better said out loud.
3. ¿Podés venir una vez por semana? ¿O preferís cada dos semanas? — Weekly or every other week?
4. Una vez que conozcas bien el departamento, ¿estarías cómoda con una tarifa fija por visita, que incluya el viaje? — Once you know the apartment well, would you be comfortable with a flat rate per visit that includes travel?

Frame that last one the way it's meant: a flat rate that includes her travel time and will be fair, not a device for paying less. Getting to your apartment is unpaid time for her, and a flat per-visit rate that acknowledges it is usually welcome. If it reads as a discount attempt, you've asked it wrong.

Don't Forget

• Aguinaldo — the SAC, a proportional 13th salary, paid in two halves in June and December. Proportional to hours worked; on a part-time cleaner it's small, but it's owed.
• Vacations — paid annual leave, scaled to seniority.
• ART up front — the first premium is due at registration, not with the first monthly cycle.
• Register from day one — that six-month probation only exists if she was registered from the start.
• Keep the constancia de alta and the transfer comprobantes. Between those two documents you have essentially everything a dispute would ask for.