Quote:
Originally Posted by no_worries
If they're driving your equipment they cannot be independent contractors. Your drivers are all employees and as such you should be paying unemployment taxes. I don't know how the division of taxes works in Texas, but you probably should have been paying Workmens Comp as well. You've stayed under the radar until now...Incoming! :shock:
Well, I don't know. GMAN and I were having this conversation in another thread. He seems to think it might be legal to run a driver as a "contract laborer" under certain circumstances, depending on the allocation of control, and to what extent the driver is independent of it.
After thinking about it, I think GMAN could be right. I guess what it comes down to is that I don't think of the owner as my "boss," and when people make jokes like "Carl is going to make you wash that thing" or whatever, I just blow it off deep down inside. He can't make me wash the truck. He's not paying me to do that. He can't demand that I take a run somewhere else during one of the weeks the plants on all ends of my route are shut down, although if I want to, I can. He has suggested we "switch out" and suggested I might want to "run the system for awhile" but he has taken no for an answer without pushing the issue, and I don't feel like he's trying to control me.
So I guess I more or less am legitimately an independent contract driver. Or at least I'm not desperate enough to let somebody start jerking me around, and change the terms of the deal we agreed on at the start of this thing. I don't really know for sure what's what, but I guess it's good enough that I'm not going to rock the boat.
As far as the OP's situation, since it's the state knocking on his door, he'd better get his ducks in a row. There's a form that I as a 1099 employee can file with the IRS to get them to make a determination as to whether I'm in fact an employee or not.
I can't find that form off hand, and I'm bored with this topic now. Here's one interesting link I found though:
http://www.topechelon.com/recruiters...ng/20point.htm