Posted on 03/26/2013 10:48:52 PM PDT by JSDude1
Edited on 03/27/2013 4:56:55 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
When Worker’s comp coverage for their company (in ND—state is the sole provider) runs only $250 and that includes the owner, and is only about 1/10 of the general liability insurance, it isn’t enough to complain about. One day’s work will more than recoup that cost.
Be darn careful the ‘subcontractor laws’ have and are changing making it nearly impossible to hire anyone as an independent contractor!
If they do the same work as you...they are an employee!
There are a few grandfathered exceptions, but most of it is being forced(audit) away.
People aren't buying the same stuff they used to. I have a young child, and we used to shop a lot at Walmart and Target for shoes and clothes. Because of the stocking issues (really, they had no shoes that were girls size 9), we started ordering online.
Once that pattern starts, people don't go back.
I have seen the same thing. Not only not enough staff but poorly trained staff.
For example, all food stores and Home Depot have automated checkers here but Walmarts had to shuts theirs down because they couldnt even get staff to watch them for shoplifting.
You could tell problems before that because when a machine was hung up (happened all the time) no one came to clear the problem and the sheep would just wait there on line for old age to take them.(HA-HA, the blinking red light says 'please wait, help is on the way', Marylanders are sheep)
One time I was looking for something and the Walmart employee points up to the product on a shelf 16 feet high and walks away.
But it attracts a customer base who doesn't care how bad service is, they just want low prices and don't care if they wait 10 -20 min to reach checkout on line. I sure dont want them as neighbors though.
I have used Walmart.com to order items not stocked in my local store. Good price, free shipping, I get an email when it comes in (quickly)and then can go pick it up. If it is an emergency item, my husband works in a nearby city and they have 2 Walmarts, so it is often available there.
However, I always use Internet to check for prices/shipping cost and time. Walmart sometimes doesn’t offer an item, so it can depend/vary.
We have clients who are longtime Walmart employees. They are loyal and hardworking. It may just depend on an area.
As for real estate, I don’t doubt it, but locally, all I have observed is that Walmart won’t sell an old facility to a competitor. Neither will a local convenience store/gas station chain. Sometimes the closed locations just stay empty for a long time.
Locally, in a town of 4k, we have competitors for nearly every category that Walmart carries. Also, have several boutiques/specialty shops that fill in the gaps w/items & categories Walmart doesn’t stock.
Thanks for that. Again: Job by job basis, their existing company hired by my existing company. All invoices and payments company to company. Contract service personnel have been a way of life in this part of the oil patch for decades, so changing the definitions now is pretty tough to do as a practical matter. Almost all direct supervisory personnel at the field level are contract (consultant) personnel.
Wow...this comment surprises me. I've used both Kroger and Walmart for stocking up, and the Walmart dates go MUCH farther out than the Kroger dates. I assumed it was due to their higher sales volumes. On average, Walmart is much cheaper as well.
I occasionally go there for a product that I am looking for a deal on when I am nearby anyway if I can find a time its not crowded, but I am certainly not doing grocery shopping there. Nothing more frustrating standing on line seeing food that requires refrigeration / freezing sitting in the cart (before it even gets outside to the car for a drive home) because of poor store management and sheep customers.
We got 4 grocery stores in the same area nearby WMs competing and some of them actually respect their customers. I just assume support them anyway.
Just think how much better things will be at Walmart once they unionize....../sarc
1. Bump the wages where necessary.
2. Incentivize management to actually do their job. (negative incentives work too)
My fiancee’ was in Wally World the other day and came home and said the same thing. No inventory.
It depends very much on which WalMart you shop at. The one in Renton WA is ghetto and third world. I NEVER shop there without a sidearm. Just walking in through the parking lot is risky sometimes. The store is always dirty and a mess. This is caused by the customers more than the employees, but then they are pretty much one and the same. I only shop there if I really must.
The WalMart in Shelton WA is backwoods Arkansas. I believe many of the WalMartians pictures are taken there. That said, the store is pretty clean, customers generally don't trash the place and the employees are much friendlier.
The people who work with me have their own company, usually a one-person LLC. They contract out their services and perform as a subcontractor. It opens up opportunities to shield income from taxation not present to the average employee,(1) and lets them write off more of their operational expenses than they'd be able to write off on a form 2106.
A lot of people try to get around labor laws with the ‘sub contractor’ situation. And for a pay by the job basis, you MIGHT get away with it. But the very first time you require them to show up at a specific time and do not allow them to leave without threat of losing money, they become employees.(2)
An employer has to be very careful in determining who is an employee vs. who is qualified to be treated as an independent contractor. There can be huge penalties levied by the IRS against employers who misclassify employees as independent contractors especially if it is done in order to evade employment taxes. Not to mention potential issues and penalties with the DOL for violations of FLSA when it comes to overtime if it is determined the worker is actually a non-exempt employee.
An independent contractor arrangement works in some industries, say for just an example, a person who is a plumber or drywall installer who subs out their work to general contractors. But in that type of arrangement the subcontractor provides all their own tools and supplies, their own insurance including liability insurance, pays for any of their own licensures, sets their own work hours, can choose to not work, leave a job site early or start work early or work late as long as the job is completed within a predetermined timeframe as determined by the contract.
True independent contractors often have a contract per job or under a set time period – a yearly or monthly contract for services for example and there is a set price per job although they can charge by the hour. Independent contractors also work under limited direct supervision. If the employer closely supervises and directs the persons work, most likely they are not an independent contractor. They are also typically not independent contractors if they directly supervise the work of the company’s actual employees and or have the authority to assess their performance, have input on their performance reviews and raises or writes them up for disciplinary infractions as that implies an employment relationship. They are also not independent contractors if the employer has to provide training in order for them to perform the work or offers them benefits offered to employees such as paid time off, health insurance or retirement plans. Also when the work is considered integral to the business, it is more likely that the person is an employee and not an independent contractor.
Another test is whether the independent contractor is free to offer the very same services to other companies, even to the employer’s competitors and is free to do all the work themselves or hire or sub out to others to assist them. They can also refuse to take on additional work, i.e. additional jobs when offered without penalty or the threat of being terminated from the job they have already have an agreement/contract to perform. And if an independent contractor’s contract is terminated or not renewed, an independent contractor is not entitled to file for unemployment benefits. Independent contractors are also at risk for operating at a business loss where as an employee is not.
Independent contractors submit invoices for their services but don’t punch a time clock and don’t have set working hours determined by the employer. And the independent contractor gets to set payment terms (net 15 days for example), although the company may negotiate other payment terms (net 60 days or payment only after the entire job is completed). Independent contractors are responsible for paying their own taxes including self employment tax (the equivalent of the employer’s share of SS tax) and they have to file and make quarterly estimated tax payments.
A store cashier or stock clerk would definitely not IMO qualify as an independent contractor under present law.
(1)Note of a slight disagreement: tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion however is not. All income is always reportable; you are never allowed to “shield” income from taxation. But “taxable” income is determined by other factors such as netting gross income against legitimate and allowable deductible business expenses. That which is deductible as unreimbursed “Employee Business Expenses” are essentially the same as what are deductible to an independent contractor.
http://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Jobs-and-Career/Should-I-Use-IRS-Form-2106-or-2106-EZ-for-Non-Reimbursed-Work-Related-Expenses-/INF22397.html
This has a pretty good overview of employee vs. independent contractor:
http://www.legalzoom.com/everyday-law/workplace/employee-vs-independent-contractor-differences
(2)FWIW - back in the early 90’s my husband worked as an estimator/project manager for a cabinetry fabricator/installer. The company was in serious financial trouble, in great part as we learned much later because the owner was a coke head and was snorting all the company’s revenues up his nose. One day the owner came up with the idea to pay my husband as an independent contractor, paying him via an AP check for only his regular net pay (less a deduction for health insurance which he was allegedly still paying for) plus a verbal “promise” of a flat dollar bonus amount to be paid at the end of the year to cover his self employment taxes. When I found out several months later that my husband had agreed to this arrangement, I went ballistic. There was no way that my husband was an independent contractor and the owner of this company was only trying to do this to avoid paying employment taxes, which I later found out he had not been paying for the last year anyway.
To add injury to insult, the owner hadn’t paid health insurance premiums for many months either even as he was still deducting them from people’s pay. I found this out some six months later when the insurance company sent us a retroactive termination letter and I started getting collection letters from doctors for unpaid bills. Long story short, I convinced my husband to find another job and quick and a few months later the guy’s shop burned down under mysterious circumstances, although arson was never conclusively proven. Then a few months later he committed suicide and we were left holding the bag for the unpaid taxes as the business was bankrupt and he left no estate, only debt. What really made me angry was that we were supposedly friends and that the guy not only left my husband and his other employees holding the bag, he also left his wife and two children pretty much destitute.
We had a friend at the time who was a retired IRS agent who was doing tax preparations. He advised us to create a substitute W-2 showing what my husband would have been received in gross pay for the entire year as employee and the amount of SS and Medicare tax that should have been withheld. We were still on the hook for the federal and state withholding taxes that were shorted, not deducted or paid during the months that my husband was being paid only the net pay, but as we never received a 1099 and there was no way we shouldn’t have gotten one anyway, it was our only option. The IRS and the state of MD accepted our substitute form BTW, we paid the taxes owed and were never audited.
Word to the wise: if any employer tries to convert your present position to that of an independent contractor, be very aware of the law and of your potential liabilities. If you are an employer who thinks that simply converting your employees to independent contractors might be a good way to save you some money, also be aware that you cannot arbitrarily reclassify them and the IRS and DOL penalties can be huge and cost you much more than you would have paid in employment taxes or overtime.
I see it in my company all the time. We have upper management make bad business decisions, which they admit are bad business decisions, to protect their bonus.
As an engineer, that drives me nuts. I asked for, and got, my bonus to be based mostly on how the company performs and the quality of the product. If we spend more on overtime, but make double or triple that cost in profit, then it makes good business sense to do so.
Yep, you summed up my warning fairly quickly. And so sorry you went through that!!!!
P.S. I hope all the small business owner Freepers heed this warning. There are VERY DISTINCT LINES in classifying your employees as sub contractors. This is before Obamacare, and I get that is your motivation, but seriously... this is from folks trying to avoid the matching social security deductions. They didn’t do it in the 50’s, you can’t now.
Best thing we can do is get a president in there that can (AND WILL) repeal it! Cause obviously Governors and congress/house can’t or won’t.
EBH makes a very valid point. You can sub contract for ‘other services’, but if you are a plumber, and subcontract to another plumber, multiple times especially, YOU ARE AN EMPLOYER!!!! Might have gotten away with it 10 years ago, maybe even last year... but they will catch up with you.
They give you a nice, big, profitable contract. Business is good, you even expand your manufacturing facilities to cover the increased volume. Once you are financially committed to the volume, they offer more, but DEMAND a discount, or your present business is threatened. So you cave on the discount, and this commits you to more volume. Each year you re-negotiate your contract with some "child" MBA sitting in a cubicle in Bentonville. These people want one thing, more discounts, and if you don't give them, your business is threatened yearly.
The uninformed think this is great, that is what keeps prices low at WalMart...but it is done at the expense of losing profits for USA manufacturers. And for those that think that is good, take a cut in salary yearly...that is what it is like selling to them. And in the end they abandon you and buy a knockoff from China. The result is less inventory on the shelves ...there is no rational reason to sell to them to grow your company. Much safer to sell to Target and Cosco. You cannot run a business that lives off the profits of its suppliers...they will eventually be sucked dry financially. It is like a parasite that kills the host. And WalMart, big as it is, is dying. It had to happen now we are seeing it.
Some small outfits, limited to 30 people total, may spring up to provide this ‘service’, should it be economically viable - which it will not.
Unemployment is going down because nearly 8 million able bodied have left the work force since Obama.
When no one is employed, unemployment will be Zero. How fitting! Just keep voting the status quo, and we'll get there before one can say ‘socialism’.
Why work when $32,000 a year is available in benefits and cash on the dole?
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_16/604347_Walmart_availability_thread.html&page=48
LLS
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