Employment Law Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Employment Law - Research Paper Example Having independent contractors makes the business owners to avoid paying some accounting burdens such as overtime charges, workers compensations, health insurance costs, pension plans, and other employee benefits i.e. off duties, time rest periods like lunch breaks, and meals allowances. The business is also able to avoid such employees cost fulfilling business laws and regulations and the necessary charges. However, many workers may also decide to independent contractors in order to reduce expenses that employees face such as individual income tax return. Given all these benefits of classifying employees as independent contractors, what is the reason why employers would not treat his workers as independent employers? This is may be because of the consequences that may result if the Internal Revenue Service or even court finds out that a certain worker is an employee rather than independent contractor (Berson 50). If IRS gets an employer in such situation, the employer will pay full amounts for FICA portion, unemployment taxes, and compensation to the employee during the period in question. Additionally, all involved business directors and officers will be required to pay a penalty of 100% for the compensation of all withholding taxes, which are not paid. Following the recent introduction of the Employee Misclassification Prevention Law, and the preferred increment of $25 million dollars in 2014 federal budget for the labor department, employers can be sure of increased inspection by the government on classification of workers (Emerson 254). The Internal Revenue Services has also made announcement of inspecting over 6,000 businesses in the next three years in the firms, which are believed to have high rate of workers misclassification. Those employers who will be guilty will be forced to pay the set penalties. Although the mentioned industries by the Internal Revenue Service does not include, insurance, those employers found to use reasonable number of independ ent contractors will be a highly targeted. This will happen to be a great loss to such employers because of the penalties payments. In addition to such tax consequences due to worker misclassification as an independent contractor, if the law court was to make such determinations of whether a particular worker is not an independent contractor, the business owners will be subject to pay the claims that the worker could get. Such claims include; health allowances, retirement pension, and other employees’ fringe of benefits. The business will have to pay these benefits out of its own revenues. For instance, if such a worker was injured while working in business, the business will be liable to pay compensations to that particular worker and other benefits that the worker would have received from insurance if he had been a member of worker’s compensation insurance. The business may also be subject to suffering, pain, punitive, and pay penalties for failing to register its wo rkers with the worker’s compensation insurance coverage. Therefore, it is now easy to understand why an employer must be keen when making decisions on whether to classify a particular worker as employee or independent contractor. An error in classifying a certain worker as an independent contractor, instead of employee may be very expensive to both the business and the owner. Generally, business owners should use the â€Å"common law† definition of employment to determine whether to classi