New York State Businesses Misclassifying Employees

Sometimes businesses will do anything to get out of paying unemployment taxes and workers compensation benefits:

A new crackdown on employers in New York State that are paying workers off the books has snared dozens of companies and uncovered millions of dollars in violations. The sweeps focused on the construction and restaurant industries and sought to ferret out off-the-books work as well as the misclassification of workers as independent contractors.

State officials said that worker misclassification — from the failure to pay unemployment insurance taxes to failure to withhold income taxes — causes substantial revenue losses at various levels of government.

In their sweeps, which investigated 117 companies, state officials found that 2,078 employees had been misclassified as independent contractors. The task force also found 646 workers who were owed minimum and overtime wages totaling about $3 million.

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I am sure there are other businesses doing the same thing as well.