NYCPHP Meetup

[Daniel Krook]

> This appears to be a clear violation of the IRS rules for independent 
> contractors, *and* it was posted by the employer (not a job shop).

>> Position will begin as contract work, but 
>> we are hoping to be impressed enough to make a full-time offer towards 
>> the end of the contract.


These type of "trial period" contracts directly with employers seem to be 
more and more common these days.  The most often quoted time frame I see 
is 6-month contract to hire, and it applies to developers - regardless of 
the specialty - as well as web producers and project managers in many 
cases.  Sometimes it's an accurate and good faith description of how the 
employer views its committment to you as a labor producer, many times not; 
regardless of performance.

As I understand it, the limits of working 40 hours per week as a 
contractor top out at 18 months, in which case the "project" or core 
function to which you are assigned must change, or you must have a 6 month 
break before working on the same project again.  Ways around this are to 
set up a legal entity for dealing corp-to-corp with the company, or to 
work for a contracting agency middleman who becomes your proxy "employer" 
despite working on site for the first party. 

The former entitles you to deduct many things including rent and car 
payments, among other things, but requires more work to maintain and plan 
paperwork-wise. The latter has the advantage of taking care of most tax 
related paperwork as a W2 but rarely provides any benefits and will leave 
you a bitter and twisted shell of a human being in a relatively short 
amount of time.

But yeah, this job description is legal, AFAIK.





Daniel Krook, Application Developer
WW Web Production Services North 2, ibm.com
1133 Westchester Avenue, White Plains, NY 10604

Personal: http://info.krook.org/
Persona: http://w3.ibm.com/eworkplace/persona_bp_finder.jsp?CNUM=9A9796897