Working With Independent Contractors

By Stephen Fishman

This is your complete guide to hiring independent contractors to meet your business needs, from making sure you comply with state labor and antidiscrimination laws to protecting your intellectual property to drafting and signing agreements.

Working With Independent Contractors also has everything you need to know to make sure that any independent contractor you hire is not considered your employee. Lawsuits in this area are very expensive. This book educates employers about how to hire employees legally, without risking legal trouble.

With this book you can avoid misclassifying workers and learn how to:

- create a valid contract
- assess who qualifies as an independent contractor, and
- handle an IRS audit

Includes all the legal forms you need, all forms are now downladable at nolo.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NOLO
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781413320473

Stephen Fishman

Stephen Fishman is the author of many Nolo books, including Deduct It! Lower Your Small Business Taxes, Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide and Home Business Tax Deductions: Keep What You Earn—plus many other legal and business books. He received his law degree from the University of Southern California and after time in government and private practice, became a full-time legal writer.

Reviews for Working With Independent Contractors

[mrscherer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A typical Nolo press book. Straightforward, well done. Very useful.

[kpjackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent overview of starting your own business. Gives good advice and things to look out for. Great resource.

[indianajane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book has earned a prominent spot on my shelves as I add to the businesses that I am currently running. It is well-organized and offers solid advice.

[njtrout_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Working for Yourself takes you safely through every level of building your own business if you are considering self-employment as a consultant, freelancer or independent contractor. Not only filled with the requisite legal advice, this book goes way beyond the classic "Inc. Yourself" and provides end-to-end guidance on business practices for the self-employed. Not just a self-employment tax reference, Working for Yourself offers advice on where to run your business, insurance, prices and managing records. Filled with numerous examples and sample documents, this book should sit front and center in your business reference library. As an aspiring freelance photographer, I am grateful for the advice Working for Yourself provides.

[highland65 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This guide is a great resource for both first-time and returning entrepreneurs. It’s well organized and covers the key elements of the legal side of being an independent consultant or freelancer. While in logical order, it’s also entirely readable if just using it as a reference – looking up answers to your pressing questions.I would like to have seen more Internet resources, perhaps in sidebar style.I've been in business a couple of time for myself, and this book does address most of the primary "need-to-know" topics.

[librarianistbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book arrived at just the right time, as I've been offhandedly considering starting up my own part-time business. This book is a great resource for people who are thinking about or have started working for themselves. It starts with the basics: the pros & cons of working for oneself, choosing a legal form for your business, creating a business name & protecting it, and whether or not to work from home. I appreciated going through these topics before jumping into the legal and financial nitty-gritty promised in the book's subtitle.I've always been impressed by Nolo, finding their books helpful, but realistic in terms of setting readers' expectations. It's written in a neutral, professional tone. I'm not particularly versed in legal subtleties, and cannot therefore verify the accuracy of everything that Fishman writes. But that's sort of the point. This book is a starting point: the information it gives will often be sufficient, and when it isn't, it will at least help you to be an informed customer when you need to seek out professional help.As others have noted, it's a very well organized and comprehensive book. Comprehensive up to a point, as the book can't cover everything. For more in-depth material than this book can offer, Fishman provides regular citations to other books and resources (a collected 'further reading' section would have been a time-saver, but at least the information is still available). The final chapter is entitled "Help Beyond This Book," and covers when and how to contact lawyers, tax pros and others and find relevant information online (the book is in its 8th edition, and I have to wonder why the listing of usenet groups is still there, but that's a minor quibble). Appendices provide sample forms and legal agreements, and there is an index.Highly recommended

[chris177 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Once again NOLO did it! They put together a great business reference book for those of us that work for ourselves. The book has 21 chapters and an index to make topics easy to find. Nolo books are even more helpful because the chapters do not have to be read in order. Just look up the information that you need and apply it to your situation. This particular book is great for those that already have their own business or for those doing research on how to start their own business. The book’s main focus is laws and taxes but it goes over other topics as well. I find this book to be another helpful device in the small businessperson’s tool-belt.

[skiegazer3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The gods must have known I'd be needing this book! When I first snagged a free copy thanks to LibraryThing's Early Reviewer drawing, I was surprised and not exactly over-the-moon.... after all, at the time I was working a steady job for a small company, and didn't think I'd be needing its advice for a long while yet. BUT, not a week later, news came through that my job situation was changing and I would, from now on, be an independent contractor and proud member of the Self-Employed. Suddenly, this book was a life-saver, especially as Tax Day loomed.This book is a wonderful resource for people who are self-employed, whether they work as independent contractors and consultants for clients, run a small business of their own, or work from home. Chapters cover everything from how to get started establishing your business, to insurance and contracts, from filing quarterly and annual taxes, to accounting and legal advice. It provides an excellent guide to the basics, so you don't have to know all the legal lingo or already be a tax expert to benefit - yet with its appendices and lists of further resources, it also gives you a comprehensive overview that can point you in the right direction when you do need that extra help.I definitely recommend it for anyone who is even thinking about exploring the idea of self-employment. This book can definitely help you figure out if that's the right path for you, and if it is, how to make the law work for you.

[nathanaels_19 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This reference work is extremely well organized and easy to use. If you have a small service business, this book will give you specific advice on where you need to focus your record keeping. It even gives examples of record sheets, so you don't have to reinvent the wheal, but you also don't have to sort through piles of paperwork which don't apply to you. Just look up the section you need and then add that one form to your regular records. Like most NOLO guides, this is a very clear and concise book, packed with helpful information.