Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: hiring labor

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

RoseWind Cohousing here, Port Townsend Washington. 

Keep in mind that when you hire people you legally become an Employer. 
You are entering the realm of IRS, L&I (workman's comp/disability), 
Social Security, and sundry liability. Check your state L&I laws, for a 
start. You should either hire workers who are paying their own L&I 
insurance (and see written proof of it), or do all the paper work and 
make the payments yourself. L&I cross references with IRS, so of course 
you also then have to do tax reporting etc. It can get complicated. 

We hired a local friend to do a job, he fell and broke his hip, and filed 
for L&I coverage even though he knew that neither he nor we had paid in 
for it. (It was never alleged that the accident was our FAULT, even.)  
They then went after us, followed by the IRS. At one point we were faced 
with the terrifying prospect of as much as $400,000 in potential cost to 
us (lost wages for years etc etc). We got off for less than $10,000, but 
it took up hundreds of hours of volunteer time and emptied every cookie 
jar in the budget, including thousands chopped out of our CH construction 
budget. Learn from our naivete!

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com

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