2010 may well be the year of the employee. Both the IRS and the Department of Labor are adding investigators to find “misclassified” employees. For many years, employers have relied on independent contractors as a means of controlling payroll and benefits costs, as well as reducing the costs of recruiting and training new workers. The [...]

From time-to-time, articles by our colleagues here at the firm have information on topics that are so important and timely for all of our readers that we post them here. The analysis below from Bruce L. Mertens, an experienced trust and estate attorney at Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, includes estate tax information that is [...]

During the past 4-5 years, many of my clients have been laid off from their corporate jobs, only to be re-hired as independent contractors, consultants or free-lancers. This is cost-effective for the company, which is no longer paying benefits and employment taxes on the employee. But companies need to be careful when hiring contractors and [...]

In my spam filter this morning were three emails from “service@irs-usa.com” with the subject “Notice From the Department of Treasury.” They were all viruses. Please note first that all emails from the federal government will almost always use .gov and not .com as the top-level domain name. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service will NEVER [...]