Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to attend a dinner at which one of the speakers, a local boy made good, was a member of the Obama Administration. He described the environment in which he worked perfectly. “Washington, D.C. is an interesting place,” he said, “that is completely surrounded by the real world.” Truer [...]

Amidst all the jumping up and down and yelling about the health care reform bill that was signed into law earlier this year, very little attention was paid to an obscure provision about 1099s. But that obscure tax provision is expected to increased the tax compliance paperwork burden for microbusinesses by an absurd 1250%, according [...]

The Obama Administration seems to be playing its own rather peculiar game with the nation’s small businesses, one that might best be described as I give with one hand and take away with the other. So, while Administration officials have been singing the praises of small businesses and describing the Presidents pro-small business proposals, there [...]

Misclassification of workers as independent contractors is a pretty widespread problem, according to a report released earlier this month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The precise extent of misclassification is unknown but, for example, in 1984, the Internal Revenue Service estimated that 3.4 million workers were misclassified by employers resulting in a revenue loss [...]

There are certain issues that perpetually perplex the U.S. Congress. Some of them are large, headline-grabbing issues, like access to affordable health care and ending the conflict in Iraq. Others are much smaller but no less vexing. One such issue is the question of classification of independent contractors. You wouldn’t think such a seemingly simple [...]

The Labor Department is hostile to self-employment, largely because it concerns itself with workers who are employees. Employees have certain rights that are protected by the Labor Department. Independent contractors and those self-employed types take work away from employees, when employees ought to have first dibs on it.

Well, after all, it is the Labor Department.

Treasury, and in particular, the IRS, has no such biases. All they care about is that everybody pay their taxes.

In fact, I have come across taxpayer advice on the IRS web site instructing people who accept bribes, commit fraud, and rob people of their property not to forget to pay their taxes. Who knew the IRS was such a tolerant bunch?

Congressional Democrats want to do something about the way wages have not kept pace with productivity increases over the last ten years or so, as part of their larger effort to “rebuild the middle class.” Evidently having concluded that the best answer to wage stagnation is labor unions, they have re-introduced the Employee Free Choice [...]