Which Form 8865 Contractors 2023-2024

Welcome to this episode of Top Echelon TV. I'm Marc Demery, and in this episode, we're fortunate enough to have Debbie Flutterjohn, President of Top Echelon Contracting, with us. Every so often, we'll get questions from our customers on what's the difference between a 1099 contract employee and a W-2, and when should you do that? So, we thought, well, the best way to answer that question is to ask the expert. So, let me ask you straight out, what is the difference between a 1099 independent contractor and a W-2? Okay, Mark, that's a great question. We get that question in our office on a very regular basis, and there are occasions when you can classify a worker as an independent contractor, but it's not the norm in today's society. The IRS is actually doing a huge crackdown on this issue. They have a new incentive called the 2010 IRS Employment Tax National Research Project. They've actually hired 2,000 auditors to go out there and audit companies for the next three years, looking for employee misclassification because of the huge tax dollar gap. So, the main differences when it comes to employees, which we're classifying them as workers now, versus a true W-2 employee, goes to the tax situation. If someone's being paid as an independent contractor, the client company is not paying into federal unemployment tax, they're not paying state unemployment tax, they're not paying into Social Security and Medicare, they're not paying into unemployment for the worker, and they're not paying into benefits. And most importantly, there's no workers' compensation coverage. So, from an employer's perspective or the client company, there's a huge tax savings. But then, from the employee standpoint, the worker is not paying federal income tax, they're not paying into state income tax, they're not paying...