Posted on 12/22/2007 2:49:32 PM PST by lowbridge
FedEx Corp. said late Friday that the Internal Revenue Service has ordered the company to pay back taxes and fines totaling $319 million for ground employees the firm misclassified as independent contractors.
The ruling covers 13,000 employees FedEx had in 2002, and the company said that the IRS is investigating the status of contractors hired between 2004 and 2006. That probe could lead to further penalties, the company said.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
What the corporations and the unions are doing are completely different. The businesses are donating to both political parties, usually pretty much equally, as a matter of business survival. It's not an option. It's a necessity for them, just as a neighborhood business in a Mafia controlled area has to pay protection money to the local Mafia thugs, to avoid getting their business or theirselves busted up.
On the other hand, unions take their members dues, some of whom vote Democrat, and some of whom vote Republican, and all the union political donations go to the Democrat party. If they donated part of those dues to the Republican party, Harry Reid is not going to break the knee caps of the union leadership, or send the Justice Dept after them, as happened to Microsoft, when they didn't donate "enough" to the political parties. So what the unions are doing is not at all the same as what corporations are doing.
If I were a Republican paying dues in a union, I wouldn't particularly like the union's practice of giving my portion of dues that are donated politically, to the Democrat party, nor would I feel that it is "fair", though there would be nothing I could do about it as long as I chose to stay in the union.
For myself, because unions support the Democrat party exclusively, I chose to do business with non-union companies, whenever practical, since my choice is to vote Republican, and to try to avoid supporting the Democrat party in any way.
I was doing FEDEX SAME DAY’s as an independent contractor.
I worked for another company that ‘worked’ for FEDEX and I had to keep reminding them that I had to work for other delivery companies to maintain my independent status.
When FEDEX started their FEDEX HOME company I went and checked them out. They REQUIRED I wear FEDEX on my shirt, put FEDEX Logos ON MY TRUCK....I declined and in fairness to them, that was made apparent up front. These guys that have been doing the HOME DELIVERY service for FEDEX don’t have a legitimate complaint because it was explained to them from the start....
I do imagine FEDEX would get their shorts in a bunch if I was making a delivery for XYZ COMPANY in MY truck with my FEDEX shirt and DECALS on my truck...It would be interesting to see how they (FEDEX) figured they could get around that (single customer) angle.
Name one dishonest thing about the FairTax.
This would not be an issue if The Fair Tax were enacted to replace the federal income tax code with a national sales tax since The Fair Tax will abolish the IRS. It’s time to end the madness! Fair Tax ping!
so we all qualify for Social Security and disability whether we work or not? This fair tax will go broke in a very short time.
How about reading the legislation before showing your ignorance?
Here it is:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-25
Scroll down to Section 903. And don’t say I wasn’t nice to you.
BTW I do not understand how your own success in business story just told is pertinent at all to your complaints. It answers nothing. Aesop's story predicted the type of complaints you make about FedEx and its business associates.
That is incorrect. The FairTax would remove ALL federal withholding requirements and this situation COULD NOT exist if it were the law of the land.
You can learn more about the FairTax at http://www.fairtax.org
My argument would be that the IRS should not care if you are an “independent contractor” or employee since they get the tax money anyway - either from the individual “independent contractors” or the employer. I realize that they are inforcing the “law”, but in my opinion the law is wrong. Their problem is that if each of the “independent contractors” is a tax cheat, they have a lot more collection actions to take.
DHL - isn’t that military speak for “Damned Hard Landing”?
Yes, another such arbitrary designation into the degraded human condition of “employee” is a BIG reason off-shoring seems economic to businesses such as Boeing (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1943442/posts).
An engineer or knowledge-worker at a workstation costs a company a big money premium (maybe 33% plus) when designated as an employee. The IRS makes damn sure we US citizens can’t compete as individuals, and are way too overpriced as “employees”.
Same. Use FEDEX for the business because of delivery of documents whose replacement is an enormously expensive hassle. No problems.
I never hesitate to buy anything from Amazon and have never been disappointed.
After reading that, no one should blame you for taking your manufacturing operations outside of the US. That’s outrageous!
I think FedEx is wrong and the IRS is correct on this issue....frankly I am surprised that it took the IRS this long to get a ruling.
Now a precident has been set for 2003-Current.
Frankly I like FedEx...its a great company but I think they have been, at the very least, “Immoral” in the way they treat their employees and attempt to avoid lawful taxes.
All employees that are classified as contractors have to pay for all benefits out of their own pockets....kinda cheesy in my opinion.
I wouldn’t treat MY EMPLOYEES that way.
Business is doing exactly what the unions are doing; only business is playing both sides of the street because of its financial depth.
It’s no secret that business is an avowed enemy of labor, union or otherwise. If possible business would willing embrace, as it did in the 1930s, the use of police and private agents to attack, injure or even kill people who seek to organize into a union.
Today that isn’t necessary in the United States because business can let the communist regimes of China and Vietnam do exactly the same thing for them by using manfacturing facilities in those nations. And, to a slightly lesser extent achieve the same ends in third world countries where environmental and labor laws don’t exist or aren’t enforced.
I find both business and unions to be neither all bad or all good. But, the unfathomable greed of business and the unions’ mindless support of the radical left is reprehensible and damnable.
But, the current crop of business leaders born during or soon after World War II are the most avaricious individuals this nation has produced in some time. Additionally, their anti-American practices are now endorsed in our MBA programs. The welfare of our nation and its citizens are of little concern to business and a focused representation of union members has been abandoned by union leaders in favor of political gain through a socialist agenda.
I believe we have been betrayed on both sides of the labor divide though I will always use unionized, skilled crafts when needed, i.e., plumbers, electricians, carpenters, drywallers or sheetmetal workers, because of the high qualilty of work they produce.
No doubt their are those who won’t agree with my take on the use of union crafts and will offer examples otherwise, but, those who have passed through a union apprenticeship demonstrate far more skill than those who haven’t.
In my area,illegal immigrants and the Amish are much used in the trades. The illegals have a much deserved bad reputation, but continue to be used by contractors and individuals. The Amish are wood butchers but cheap and somehow maintain a cachet to the detriment of those who employ them.
We have a lot of precen dence in Cal with exclusivity. In fact it’s required by the state. Everyone is on 1099.
I jumped ship at FedEx Ground early this summer. When they converted the third floor to offices for lawyers, I could see that things were changing quickly. The lawyers became the centerpiece of the building and bonuses were gutted. I loved working for them until the lawsuits came pouring in.
I have contracted non-union tradesmen my whole life, and always manage to find workers who produce excellent quality work. I live in a "right-to-work state", and unions just are not very popular overall here. They are always trying, but never get a foothold here. My wife is a nurse, and they are always trying to unionize the medical workers, but they are never successful, as the nurses have great benefits, pay, and conditions here, so the majority are just not interested in the union. To each his own. If you like unions, go for it. I don't care. It's a free country ... until and unless we become completely socialized.
The government will pay sales tax on its purchases. That is the same as a cow living on its own milk. The government has no money to pay taxes save what it collects in taxes. The missing revenues will be recovered through an even higher tax rate than has been claimed...or an expanded scope of things subject to the sales tax.
The "pre-bate" is socialist redistribution. It will create yet another giant government bureaucracy. Eliminate sales taxes on food and you eliminate the justification for this "pre-bate" and the associated bureaucracy.
It creates double taxation by taxing purchases made with money already taxed by the current income tax. Those who have substantial savings from their after tax earnings will get screwed big time.
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