What must I do when hiring a personal assistant in Connecticut? I recently hired someone to work with me on personal tasks, such as listing some of my personal items for sale online. We both live in Connecticut. We work together in person in Connecticut for 1 hour per week, and I pay them $15/hour. We are both working as individuals (not businesses). What must I do (to abide by the law) when hiring a personal assistant in Connecticut? For example, must I withhold taxes or report anything to the government?
What follows is a broad overview. I'm not an expert in this; I just have a bit of experience in this due to a tax situation my wife &amp; I experienced a few years ago. Please do not rely on this advice except as a starting point for more Googling. Your obligations (and your assistant's) will depend on whether the assistant is an employee or an independent contractor. In general, an independent contractor is someone you hire to "get a job done"; you have minimal control over the manner, time, place, tools, etc., that the assistant uses. An employee, on the other hand, is someone you hire to come to work at a particular time and do the job a particular way. (I'm glossing over some details here; see the IRS link above for more details.) If your assistant is an independent contractor, and you pay them over a certain threshold ($600 for 2020), you must provide them with Form 1099-MISC, and file a copy with the IRS as well. Your assistant will then be liable for income taxes on this amount, as well as self-employment tax (see below.) If your assistant is actually an employee, and you pay them over a certain threshold ($600 for 2020), you are required to provide them with a W-2 form, as well as filing a copy with the IRS. In addition, if you pay them more than a higher threshold ($2200 in a tax year or $1000 in any quarter for 2020), you are responsible for withholding taxes from their paychecks, as well as paying the employer's portion of Social Security, Medicare, and/or federal unemployment taxes. How to figure these taxes is complex, but generally the employee must provide you with a completed W-4, and then you must provide them (and the IRS) with a W-2 at the end of the tax year. See Publication 15: Employer's Tax Guide for all the gory details. The self-employment tax is designed to effectively cover the employer's portion of these taxes for self-employed workers. As you might imagine, employers are often tempted to misclassify employees as "independent contractors", since this means that this tax liability gets pushed from them onto their workers, as well as just making the employer's life easier. The Feds will not take kindly to such misclassification if it is discovered. Finally, for the state of Connecticut, consult the CT 1009-MISC filing guide (if your assistant is an independent contractor) or the Connecticut employer's tax guide (if they are an employee). The distinction is pretty much the same as at the federal level.
I have already contacted a lawyer and paid all the money I had and they didn't help me resolve anything, the guy just talked to me for a little bit. He essentially just took my $600 and no action was made. He said the best thing to do would be to wait it out because the contracts were never fulfilled by them and they can't claim my inventions etc if I am an independent contractor. To me it just sounded like a bunch of BS and not a real solution to this. You paid $600 for expert advice which told you to do nothing. You think the advice is bullshit and intend to go full steam ahead against the advice given. I'd say it is very likely that the lawyer is a better expert than you, so you should follow his advice. You are in a hole, you were told to stop digging, and you intend to continue digging. Don't. There are times where doing nothing is the best advice. In this case, you intend to accuse someone of breach of contract. That has a good chance of landing you in court. A company cannot afford to ignore such a statement. You claim the contract is void and you want to cancel it - but you can't cancel a void contract. It's void. Listen to your lawyer.
Until the estate is settled and the interest in the house is definitively resolved, the estate has to pay property taxes. There is no requirement for the house to be insured, unless there is a mortgage and insurance is mandated by the lender. The duties of the personal representative generally include taking reasonable steps to protect the assets of the estate, which would include reasonable insurance coverage -- which the estate would pay for. Necessary maintenance would also be included in the things that are to covered by the estate, for example the cost of repairing a broken water pipe (which can cause serious loss, if not repaired). Freshening up the paint in preparation for selling the house, assuming that the house is to be sold and the assets divided, would also be covered by the estate. Utilities, on the other hand, are not within the realm of things that need to be done to protect the interests of the beneficiaries: that is a benefit to whoever lives there, making it their responsibility. The question is foot-dragging is a separate issue, one that should be resolved with the aid of your lawyer. I do not understand why he would maintain that the estate is responsible for paying the utilities.
First, Texas law requires the employer to give a written earnings statement to any employee which reports the rate of pay, the total amount of pay, deductions, and hours worked if the job is paid at an hourly rate. The law also says that an earnings statement may be in any form determined by the employer. Second, there is no law requiring there to be a single earnings statement or a combined statement, in case a person is paid at different rates, the requirement is simply that the information must be provided. It is legal to hire a person to work at different rates, as long as they have some mechanism for tracking what a person is doing. It is required that they pay you a different rate for working more than a certain number of hours, which will therefore be reflected in the earnings statement.
I intend to close on the house as I've already signed all the loan paper work, but is there anything that can be done about a Realtor that breaks contract? You have probably waived your claim if you proceed with the deal knowing about the Realtor's conduct. What would your damages be? Could you have mitigated them by not agreeing to the deal? Also second question would it be better to seek a personal or Real estate attorney in such situations as this? Lawyers aren't that specialized. I would not recognize a "personal" attorney as something necessarily different from a "Real estate attorney" and the questions involved are not so complex that a general practice attorney couldn't handle them. Familiarity with real estate issues would be desirable (e.g. you wouldn't want to hire someone whose practice was exclusively as a criminal defense attorney or a personal injury lawyer, or a patent lawyer, for this task), but a great many lawyers who describe their practices differently would have the relevant experience and knowledge.
In england-and-wales there is no legal requirement, in the private sector, to advertise vacancies and employers can recruit whoever they choose as long as they do not commit unlawful direct or indirect discrimination and follow their own internal HR policies. Re: In the western hemisphere is it quite legal for employers to do things like... Exclude close family/marital relations of existing employees? YES Exclude internal applicants from consideration for jobs for which they have relevant qualifications? YES Hire non-local (here defined as those who can commute to work from their existing home) candidates in preference to local ones similarly qualified? YES Hire foreigners where they have suitable work permits? YES Summarily hire members of the business owner's family? YES as long as they are not &quot;phantom&quot; employees only put on the books soley to evade tax liabilities by, for example, paying a salary when they don't do any actual work.
Normally, you call, briefly discuss what you want, and schedule a meeting for paid consultation. The charge for a one hour consultation would vary greatly but would typically be $100-$500. You may need to sign a fee agreement and provide a retainer for the fees to be paid in advance, but different lawyers have different policies.
The Code defines "Source of income" as: lawful, verifiable income paid directly to a tenant or paid to a representative of a tenant. There's nothing to suggest that the occupation is a relevant consideration otherwise. What it would mean is that if the occupation of a person is relevant to their source of income, it would be illegal to discriminate on that basis. I would consider occupation distinct from source of income - I could (but don't) have a family trust that is my source of income, and my occupation is volunteer work. My occupation is very clearly not my source of income.