Earlier this month, the New York legislature introduced The Wage Theft Prevention Act – designed to drastically increase penalties for misclassifying employees as independent contractors, encourage workers to report abuses and provide new ways to catch violators. This news comes just weeks after the IRS began 6,000 audits focusing on the very same issues. You [...]

CFO.com just covered the increased enforcement of worker classification laws, as discussed in the last post. This time, the San Jose Mercury News described the proposed legislation to increase worker misclassification fines tenfold, potentially millions of dollars, and the Obama administration’s $25 million line item for 100 new auditors to catch violators. Many companies in [...]

Citing studies that show increased use of independent contractors by companies today, CFO.com urges companies to be cautious when labeling workers as independent contractors. The article goes on to describe increased enforcement efforts by the IRS in the form of 6,000 additional audits and by various state Attorney Generals in the form of suits against [...]