

U.S. Cracks Down on ‘Contractors’ as a Tax Dodge - mbrubeck
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/business/18workers.html

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ShabbyDoo
I think I'm one of the supposedly harmed contractors referred to in the
article, and I'm pissed off.

The government, in it's mis-directed efforts to help people, has forced W2
employees to opt into a bunch of insurance pools which they might not deem
personally necessary. If you had the option of paying out-of-pocket for
unemployment insurance, would you? How about the implicit insurance against
discriminatory termination? Do you need the right to sue your employer for
sexual harassment? Do you want to limit your 401K choices to those crappy
mutual funds with 3% management fees? Do you want your employer to have a
significant financial disincentive to offer you the opportunity to work more
than 40 hours per week (paid hourly)? These are the things you opt into with
full time employment.

The article didn't bother to mention the pay differential between contract and
W2 labor. How much more were those cable installers paid per hour than the
prevailing W2 wage for the same work?

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mbrubeck
This was the front-page story on yesterday's New York Times.

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araneae
Interesting...

The guy crashed his plane at 10am that day. Might this article have been the
final straw?

