Why the hell is everything on allocation?

Yes, there is abuse. But that also gives us freedoms that other countries do not have. Less law = more freedom. In the old days you just hung out a shingle and you were in business.

No, he clearly does not qualify. But the fact is that many trades work that way since decades. Truckers, for example. Many own the tractor but gets all the assignments from da boss and some even have to have their truck painted in company colors. Yet nobody bothers them or the large freight hauling enterprises.

Thing is, any crackdown of this sort with be a sure-fire way towards net job losses. Some companies will pull the plug out of greed and move offshore, others may have to do that to survive, and yet others may just fold (seen that happen). This is clearly not the time and economy for such crackdowns.

It's the same thing with death taxes where lots of people say "Oh, we need that revenue". IIRC that tax had killed Sam's Town, a popular Western style place for children right here in town. In 2002 bulldozers razed it, 100% of the jobs were gone, people stood there in the street with tears running down their cheeks. It has taken almost a decade until some reasonable level of business activity has been back in that area, and it still isn't where it used to be. It may never be.

Yeah, but not bothering to or haphazardly enforcing the laws on the books = less freedom too. I realize what a mess things have become -- a lot of the laws are clearly in need of elimination or reform (such as the contractor classification laws, it would appear), but rather than fixing them we instead just look the other way much of the time and then get upset when some jurisdiction is runing out of money so suddenly they decide to start enforcing them.

Agreed, but it's a rather uncomfortable situation to start deciding which laws should be enforced and which shouldn't based on the likely jobs lost!

That being said, when infractions are found reasonable allowances need to be made for compliance. E.g., in your case of Sam's Town, I'd think the feds or state or whoever closed them down would say, e.g., "your 'contractors' have been found to clearly be employees, but since it's not in anyone's best interest for you to go under, and you need to start phasing in paying social security, etc. such that you're 100% complaint by such-and-such a date..."

---Joel

It can be a little tricky. If you use your own tools, make your own hours, and can choose the assignements you want, you might be an independent contractor. If, however, you work using the company's tools, at their direction and timetable, then you are probably just a mis-labeled employee. The consequences for the EMPLOYER are huge if you are caught. If you are a small business, bankruptcy usually occurs!

Charlie

No such luck. I just had a Cal. state payroll tax seminar a month ago. If they find that you have ONE employee mis-classified as a contractor, they immediatels examine ALL your contractor arrangements to see if they are wrong too. You then owe the state and the feds ALL the tax withholdings for SS, Medicare and INCOME TAXES for the ENTIRE period of employment of each contractor. Of course, you can bill the contractor for the income taxes, if you can get them to pay them!

Charlie

Sounds rather draconian... ouch!

Surprising that people are still actively looking to start *new* businesses in Cali...

I suppose this might all be part of the "class warfare" we're accustomed to... businesses don't want to work with mortgage holders to re-finance their homes and predicate their business models on significant profits from late fees and penalties, so the proletariate turns around and makes sure that even the smallest business infractions incur heavy penalties or other business-busting punishments.

"Can't we all just get along?"

If Digikey drops the shipping costs, they are in business. Farnell is a big player but Digikey claims to be moving in. RS is a good 'second source'. Farnell and RS are known to be expensive but in my experience they can match or beat the regular distributors if the numbers hit 3 digits or more.

equipment

My attorney assured me that the "at their direction" is the crucial test.

Since what little "contracting" I do is not even in the same state, I don't fret it. Atmel did have an emotional moment about it, but I steered them to the appropriate IRS rules. ...Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I thought you were 100% a contractor with all of your clients? Are you saying that with some you're instead an off-site employee?

I separate "contracting" by the hour: hand-holding, from "full project" chip designs in my mind (and billing method). ...Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Ah, ok. Full-project chip designs are a fixed price, once you have a iron-clad spec, then?

Or maybe businesses are trying to design products and manufacture things, and aren't spending enough time reading the IRS' 76,000 pages of legalese plus quarterly updates.

Maybe businesses naively think they can contract with someone and have that person be a "contractor" working for them, and not a goldmine for the government.

It seems the government, insatiable in its need, is trying harder and harder to make anyone who does anything for you your 'employee,' and your responsibility.

All the more reason not to employ people.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Lots of laws are not enforced. Take immigration law. Or take H1B where everyone is lamenting, yet there is a clear and easily enforceable prevailing wage part built in. But it isn't enforced, even though you wouldn't even need personnel, a $500 computer could do that.

Elimination is the magic word. We have all these legislative sessions where laws are added and added, and rarely one being removed. I think that almost all laws should have automatic sunset dates in them.

Well, they used that argument for printing money and it probably won't even save much jobs :-(

They were real employees, that wasn't a problem. AFAIR old Sam died and the tax man came knocking. Because for some reason that I'll never understand even death is a taxable event. Where does it ever stop? It leads to businesses being shuttered because it no longer makes sense to run them.

That's just the thing, they usually don't. Years ago I had lots of clients in CA. Now that's down to two, but I have lots of clients in other states such as FL. Sometimes the same guys ...

Someone has to pay for Obamacare? :-)

...and plenty of current employees would be entirely amenable to that, I think.

RS used to have a nasty habit of selling "own brand" parts. You could get the real data sheet for the part they were selling at the time, but order the same part number next week, and it comes from a different manufacturer with a different - if similar - data sheet.

Farnell were a good deal more reliable.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

-- bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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"Work with"? Aren't you really asking the loan holder to lose 50% of their investment? And why? Because now the buyer wishes he'd paid less?

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Perhaps, but from a business point of view getting 50 cents on the dollar is rather better than what you get selling the debt to a collection agency or foreclosing.

Mainly because you can't squeeze water out of a rock; it doesn't really matter why the mortgage holder is no longer willing to pay. (And there's plenty of blame to go around between government mandates, greedy mortgage brokers, and selfish/ill-informed consumers...)

This all being said, in many cases people only seem to care about their monthly costs anyway... so fine, switch'em over to a 100-year fixed-rate mortgage and give'em what they want! :-)

---Joel

...and for whom. The company who hires an employee as a 100% contractor gets the IRS' proctoscope. Long ago, when people retired from IBM they often came back as contractors but could only work 999 hours in a year (...and were called 999ers ;-).

How else does an actuary determine the cost and an underwriter take the bet on INSURANCE?

In most countries they do that via the usual statistics, they aren't allowed to cherry-pick. Cherry-picking is a huge problem in the US because it causes honest people who want to pay for health insurance to have to go without. Because they can get any. All it takes is the cardinal sin of ... ... having lived and having been insured in a foreign country.

Same with auto, BTW. We paid the full teenager rates for about three years. We had written proof of umpteen years no-claim plus spotless driving records. Wasn't worth a penny because that was overseas. In the beginning nobody wanted to insure us at all. The only trick that swayed them was when I dangled a homeowner's in front of them. Engineer - homeowner - always paranoid about things that could be dangerous -> Good risk, wanna have, wanna have. "But only if you also give us auto" ... "Lemmee make some calls" ... worked.