| General Small Business Checklists - Employee or Contractor |  | |
Are they really a Contractor? Or your Employee?
Unfortunately, instead of having a simple yes-or-no answer, the answer is usually "it depends."
What it depends on is the specific reason you're asking the question:
- If you're asking whether or not you have to pay for Industrial Insurance (Workers' Compensation) on a particular person, the short answer begins on this page.
- For a more complete answer, read the booklet "
A
guide to hiring INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS in Washington State." - If you don't think you ought to be held liable for
someone else's safety violations on the job site, look at
the decision
diagram (pdf).
For Industrial Insurance, ask yourself three basic questions:
- Do they bring more than personal labor to the job?
- Are they bringing any equipment -- other than "ordinary hand tools" -- to the job?
- Are they working without your supervision?
- You ARE NOT supervising if you are just setting the schedule and then inspecting the work.
- You ARE supervising if you are telling them:
- How to do the work
- Assigning tasks
- Training
- Setting regular work hours
- Keeping time sheets
- Do they have an established, independent business?
- Do they have an established place of business (other than a truck and a cell phone)?
- Do they advertise as a business? And have other customers?
- Do they file taxes with the IRS as a business? And pay Self Employment tax for Social Security?
- Do they maintain the appropriate books on expenses, income, equipment depreciation, etc?
- Are they registered as a contractor with L&I (Check on the L&I web site)
- As always, if you're not sure, please call L&I for help.
