Employee or Contractor? | via @nytimes

“If you work for a living, do you know who your boss is? And if you run a business, do you know who’s on your payroll?

These are simple questions. But you may not have the same answers as the Internal Revenue Service.

The I.R.S. is emphasizing the distinction between employees and self-employed independent contractors this year, tax specialists warn. That makes it important for workers and critical for businesses that use their services to make sure to get the classification right. If you flub the answers, it could be costly.

In a sense, this is a semantic exercise: If someone is doing a certain kind of work for a specific amount of pay, the label you put on it might not seem to matter much. But which is which and who is who helps determine the obligations that each party in the relationship has to the other and to the I.R.S…”

Read the entire article at The New York Times:

Employee or Contractor? Health Care Law Raises Stakes

† Image courtesy Drew Leavy