by Scott Braddock
Wed, 05/25/2016 – 7:53am
The recent announcement by the IRS Commissioner that the agency is moving forward with hiring hundreds of additional agents has sparked a debate about exactly how those new resources should be utilized. Some leaders in the construction industry have told Construction Citizen that if the government has more people on hand to enforce the law, proper classification of workers should be a priority.
Misclassification is the practice of designating an employee as a “1099 worker” or an independent contractor when that person, by law, should be compensated as an employee.
Unscrupulous employers do it as a way of sidestepping payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, and workers’ compensation insurance. Even though there are many legitimate uses of contract labor, abuse of the classification gives cheating companies an ability to submit lower bids for projects, undercutting ethical contractors who follow the letter of the law.