Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Paying babysitters- the legalities

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 9/12/2003 3:09 PM, "Lynn Nadeau" <welcome [at] olympus.net> wrote:

> 
> Having survived the scary potential of one hair-raising
> potential-liability-suit situation, at RoseWind we are very careful about
> "employees." 
> 
> As a community, we have a stated value on supporting young children and
> their families, and nobody objects to the community as a whole paying
> sitters for meetings. But our accountant says we are opening ourselves to
> liability if our annual budget has a line item that says "childcare
> $400", or if an investigator could even track down and show that in fact
> RoseWind was really paying a sitter, even if we decide to make it less
> obvious by calling it "children's activities" or decide to give the kid
> team money to steward for sitting somehow.

One thing to remember is that some CPAs and lawyers delight in scaring
clients or in presenting issues in such a way that you believe their
services are valuable in protecting you from disaster.

The worst that can happen in any case is that you have a tax audit and pay a
fine or back taxes. The amount you pay any sitter cannot produce huge
liabilities. Audits are no big deal as long as your books are in order.
Audits can even be good things because you can learn a lot.

Check the law yourself to see if the interpretation makes sense.

I haven't checked it recently but the independent contractor laws used to be
written in "per person" language. You can't pay one person more than a
certain amount without incurring liabilities for social security tax,
unemployment tax, etc. Usually communities use several sitters at different
times.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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