Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Liability as an employer

[Steve Williams (sbwilliams]

I will speak from my experience in the old days (pre-1990) as a tax
accountant and farmer in Ohio.

We used to suggest that anyone who paid others to do work while on their
property have Workers' Compensation insurance as required of employers by
law.   The fact that a person claimed to be an independent contractor, or
even claimed to have Workers' Comp insurance, did not protect an "employer"
from liability if it turned out that an injured person did not, in fact,
have a Workers' Comp account.  As long as the "employer" had the account in
place, even if not paying premiums beyond the administrative fee, Workers'
Comp covered claims rather than trying to collect from the "employer".

So ... who should have had the Workers' Comp coverage in Ohio back in those
days?  (The same principles may still apply, but I'm not up to date)  Anyone
who hired a babysitter or a lawnmower or an electrician or an appliance
repair person ... the list goes on.  Since most people who routinely hired
these kinds of people to do work at their property did not have Workers'
Comp coverage, our next-best suggestion was for the "employer" to require
the worker to show his or her certificate of Workers' Comp coverage.