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>I think(g) that their reluctance will change soon (at least as far as off-site
>contracting is concerned). The IRS is planning to crack down significantly on
>employers who keep only "contract" employees so they (the employers) don't have
>to have to pay benefits. How the IRS is doing that is to more narrowly define
>who is an employee. I have a list of the twenty points they look at, if anyone
>is interested in me typing them up and posting them. The gist is, one of the
>biggies the IRS looks at is whether the employee/contractor is on or off site.
>Off site a majority of the time, in the mind(?) of the IRS, equals "contractor"
>onsite=employee. In fact, most of my contracting clients INSIST that I work
>off-site...
I'd like very much to see the list of 20 points that the IRS is going to look
at. I'm trying to build up ammunition to take to my manager to show how the
company will benefit if I work by telecommuting. I've heard about the govt.
plans to encourage telecommuting by forcing companies to reduct work-related
travel so that we can cut down on pollution and traffic problems.
I'd love to see STC "gang up on" employers and take some action to encourage
telecommuting. I'd like to see telecommuting become much more acceptable and
commonplace. Right now, it seems that employers have the attitude that they're
doing employees a big favor by allowing them to telecommute. I'd like to see
it turned around so that employers are much more agreeable to telecommuting.
If I'm going to work by telecommuting, I don't want to be penalized in any
way professionally - although I may be willing to take a cut in pay if I don't
have to pay for commuting and parking expenses.
As a part of this effort, I'd like to learn more about the Information Highway,
how and when we can tap into it (I know it'll be about 2 years), what we
can do today to plan for this new mode of doing business, who is going to
pay for the connections, what we can do to get the ISDN or fiber optic cables
to our community, etc.
Peg Mauer
Technical Communications Specialist
Eastman Kodak Company
mauer -at- feds -dot- kodak -dot- com