California is defaulting on its COVID-19 pandemic federal unemployment insurance loans, and California employers will bear the cost of the default. California was one of twenty-two states that received federal unemployment insurance loans to cover claims during the...
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The California Court of Appeals Rules that Proposition 22 is Mostly Constitutional
In November 2020, the voters approved Proposition 22, the Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act (Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 7448–7467). This meant app-based drivers such as Uber, Uber Eats, Lyft, and GrubHub, could be classified as independent contractors by the...
Finally, the Answer on Worker Classification in the California Trucking Industry
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court denied the request to hear the appeal of a case which ultimately resolves the worker classification rules for truckers in California that had been challenged since September 2019 when Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) was enacted to codify the...
California Businessman Indicted on Tax Charges
The importance of paying over employment taxes cannot be overstated. Larry Kudsk, a Berkeley construction businessman, learned this the hard way recently when he was indicted on seven counts of failing to pay over employment taxes he withheld from employee’s...
IRS Reminder: Correctly Classify your Workers!
Recently the IRS released some tax tips for small business owners and self-employed individuals. One critical reminder for all business owners: correctly identify workers as either employees or independent contractors. Misclassifying an employee as an independent...
California EDD Measures Demand for Nurses, Truck Drivers, and Retail Work
Not surprisingly, in the EDD’s annual Labor Day Briefing the Department noted that registered nurses are the most in-demand occupations in California, along with operations managers for occupations identified as high-skilled. As we continue to recover form the...
Unemployment Benefit Fraud – What To Do
While the state and federal law enforcement agencies aggressively target those committing fraud for COVID-19 relief payments and unemployment compensation claims, be aware that if someone has filed a claim using your social security information, you will receive Form...
AB 5-Compliant Independent Contractor Agreements
Assembly Bill 5 was passed and signed into law in September 2019. The bill instituted the new California worker classification test, the ABC Test (Labor Code section 2750.3), which states that a worker is an independent contractor only if the company hiring the worker...
Uber and Postmates Denied Injunctive Relief Against AB 5
Uber and Postmates hit another AB 5 roadblock this month when a California district court refused to enjoin enforcement of AB 5, finding that AB 5 is rationally related to the state’s valid interest in preventing misclassification of works, that the plaintiffs could...
Good News for California Truckers and other Independent Contractors
Two recent court decisions are helping to quell the effects of the recently-passed Assembly Bill AB 5 (Gonzales, Chaptered September 18, 2019) in regard to California trucking companies, by determining that federal law preempts the most problematic part of both AB 5...