Wage and Hour Defense Blog

By Frederick Dawkins and Douglas Weiner

Earlier this month, at the ABA Labor and Employment Law Conference, Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith reaffirmed that investigating independent contractors as misclassified remains a top priority of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) enforcement initiatives.  The DOL will continue to work with other federal and state agencies, including the IRS, to share information and jointly investigate claims of worker misclassification.  The joint enforcement effort is certainly driven by, among other things, an interest in ...

by Dean L. Silverberg, Jeffrey M. Landes, Susan Gross Sholinsky, and Jennifer A. Goldman

On September 21, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") announced a new program that will give businesses the opportunity to resolve prior worker classification issues by voluntarily reclassifying their non-employee workers (such as consultants, freelancers, and independent contractors) as employees for federal employment tax purposes. Officially called the "Voluntary Classification Settlement Program" ("VCSP"), this program is part of a larger "Fresh Start" initiative at the ...

In light of the IRS' increased efforts to root out and capture unreported income, one of our hospitality clients recently asked us to provide some clarification regarding: 1) the obligations of employees to report tip income; 2) the obligations of employers to report tip income; and 3) the risks of underreporting of the tip income of its employees.