I was thinking of anouther angle. (Hypotheticly) I own a large bowling alley called Steve’s bowling. I have 65 employees and the place won’t run right with 49. What keeps me from shutting down the concession stand and firing 16 people. Then my brothers company “Daves Catering” hires the 16 people I fired and I rents out space in the bowling alley to sell concessions. Outside of changing stationary, nothing changes and I am out from under Ocare.
A plausible possibility, providing that "Dave's Catering" and "Steve's Bowling" do not co-mingle books and/or managers. If a Manager from Steve's can give instruction to an employee of Dave's (other than the "that goes to lane 5" kind of thing), they call that co-employment and then the IRS and OCare are on you again.
The biggest problem that I see with this, is that we're running out of time to get the business' seperated, re-aligned, or even just operational to avoid the all seeing eye of the IRS.
For example, under your Steve and Dave scenario, Dave would have to get a liquor license (I going to assume there is beer there!) and that usually takes several months, and then there would be the cancelling of Steve's license, the required food prep certifications etc, etc.
(Sigh, it makes my head hurt.)
I’ve been thinking this same thing. Certainly they’ve put in contingencies for companies that split up divisionally into separate companies, i.e, finance/payroll, human resources, marketing, research & development, etc. all operate as separate entities? As long as each division is under 49 employees.