Businesses that treat workers in a single tax year as both a W-2 employee and a 1099 independent contractor (IC) typically raise red flags at the IRS and state workforce agencies. Only in rare cases do agencies or the courts countenance a worker being classified simultaneously as both an employee…

The Chief of the IRS’s Employment Tax Policy section, John Tuzynski, told lawyers on May 10, 2013 at an American Bar Association’s meeting of tax lawyers in Washington, D.C. that the IRS will soon be pursuing more cases involving independent contractor (IC) misclassification through its Questionable Employment Tax Practices (QETP)…

The U.S. Department of Labor has targeted a number of industries for allegedly misclassifying employees as independent contractors (ICs), and cable companies are one of them.  On May 9, 2013, the Labor Department announced in a press release that Bowlin Group LLC, which provides installation services for Insight Communications,…

April 2013

In the Courts

• New York federal district court grants plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in lawsuit  alleging that the United States Tennis Association (USTA) misclassified U.S Open umpires as independent contractors and failed to compensate them with overtime pay in violation of the New York Labor Law and

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My two prior blog posts have focused on the rising costs of misclassification liability for trucking, delivery, and transportation companies and the industry’s efforts to avoid such costs when confronted by state laws governing the status of independent contractors (ICs).  One of the ways in which such companies have been…

The President’s long-awaited 2014 fiscal year budget was released earlier today, April 10, 2013.  One of the “funding highlights” listed in the section of the Budget covering the Department of Labor is to “Maintain support for agencies that protect workers’ wages, benefits, health and safety, and invest in preventing …

In October of 2010, I reported on a federal court decision certifying a class action of adult dancers that performed services at the Penthouse Executive Club in New York City; the dancers claimed they are “employees” under federal and state laws and had been misclassified as independent contractors (ICs). They…

March 2013

In the Courts:

• A Pennsylvania federal district court grants motion of trucking and courier company, American Eagle Express (AEX), to decertify a class of 201 delivery drivers who allege that AEX misclassified them as independent contractors and denied them overtime compensation under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act

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