On December 15th, Senator John Kerry picked up where he left off in 2008 when he sponsored S. 2882, the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability, and Consistency Act of 2009. The new legislation is aimed at amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, which would make it more difficult and costly to misclassify workers as independent contractors. Senator Kerry’s latest bill sponsorship should come as no surprise since he was a co-sponsor in 2008 on S. 3648, the Employee Mislcassification and Prevention Act which included sponsorship by then Senator Obama and the late Senator Ted Kennedy.
S. 2882 would essentially rewrite the Safe Harbor (Section 530) loophole that according to Kerry, “allows employers to treat a worker as an ‘independent contractor’ for employment tax purposes, regardless of the worker’s actual status under the common law test, unless the employer has no reasonable basis for such treatment or fails to meet certain requirements”.
Senator Kerry’s efforts appear to be a direct reflection of what’s going on with his state of Massachusetts as it continues to be a leader in attempting to curb worker misclassification. Massachusetts has led the nation with implementing legislation, issuing advisories and taking the fight directly to the businesses who misclassify their workers.
Now I’m not sure what the end result of this bill will be but I can only assume that it won’t be long until some piece of worker misclassification legislation finds its way to the President’s desk for his approval.