New Jersey just made life very difficult for all employers in every industry, specifically small businesses. In New Jersey, business owners can now be criminally charged and fined up to $5,000.00 per day for misclassifying workers as independent contractors.
Running a small business can be very difficult. One of the issues that employers of all sizes struggle with is whether to classify workers as statutory employees or independent contractors. Statutory employees are paid on a W-2 basis, whereby the employer withholds federal and state payroll taxes. W2 employees have certain rights and remedies available to them under state and federal law. For example, the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law is one of those laws.
Independent contractors, on the other hand, negotiate their work relationships with employers and have those relationships governed by contract. Those contracts can provide the worker with rights and remedies. That is one of the points under attack by this overreach in New Jersey- the freedom of contract.
Read moreThe effectiveness of any nonprofit organization- especially in the arts world - starts with a strong and well trained board of directors. This is often the weak point of smaller organizations, but it doesn't have to be that way.
In this one hour session, we'll explore the role of the board of directors in a nonprofit organization, best practices for governance of the organization, liability issues for those who serve on nonprofit boards, and basic insurance related issues.
Read morePeople in the entertainment business (and everyone else) have been reading the news that the late actor James Dean was cast in an upcoming film project. Dean, who died in 1955, will be digitally resurrected through CGI technology. Dean - well, not exactly James Dean, but the likeness of James Dean - will “act” in an upcoming film that I’m not even going to name because of my personal aversion to this.
Many people, not just film industry people, are expressing their displeasure with this. I am one of them. We have seen this before, with Disney’s use of the likenesses of the late Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in the film Rogue One. I wrote about that extensively here.
From a legal standpoint, there are two important questions: 1) How did this happen? and 2) How can people control their likenesses after death?
Read moreTo determine whether a worker is a W2 employee vs. an independent contractor, the IRS looks at several factors, but the most important factor is the amount of control the employer exerts over the worker’s behavior.
What this means is whether the employer directs or controls how the worker does the work. A worker is an employee when the business has the right to direct and control the worker. The business does not have to actually direct or control the way the work is done – as long as the employer has the right to direct and control the work.
The behavioral control factors fall into several categories:
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