Congratulations @conmama, everyone who wants a job should be able to have one.
Yup, intparent, that is the downside. The upside… I picked my own schedule, unless I was really needed onsite.
You are probably right that IT gets more scrutiny than other fields when it comes to contract employees. It is the number one field that has been on the IRS’s radar, for sure. Conmama is in accounting…
Not to mention paid holidays, vacations and sick days that contractor does not get.
First, apologies for all the typos in my OP…and the misleading title, should have worded it differently,
The recruiter gets paid from the company and they in turn around and pay me. So, I guess I’m an employee of the recruiter, as per what @morrismm described.
The recruiter knows my previous salary and that how many hours I worked per week. He is paying me $5 less per hour. That is fine with me due to this flexible position. I got the job just after 10 days of meeting him.
Thanks for all the good wishes.
I’m a bit nervous!
I use a lot of IT consultants. We used to be able to hire individual consultants, but they put a stop to it due to tax issues (some individuals may not file taxes promptly and my firm didn’t want to get audited), companies also require very large liability insurance from their consultants, which many individuals couldn’t afford. I will negotiate with the vendor on the fees if I need to keep the cost down, instead of taking it from the consultant. Sometimes if I want to work with a certain individual I would ask a friendly consulting firm to do billing for that individual for $5/hr. What @intparent described is very consistent with my experience, from the other side.
Congrats conmama. This sounds like a win-win for everyone.
Some differences some may have experienced can be related to state laws on how an ‘independent contractor’ is legally defined. It can be tricky.
@lookingforward, I know the IRS has put some definition around this. But was not aware that states have. I just moved to a new state… feel like I better investigate more.
Same…and there’s the added chore of having to pay estimated taxes. People underestimate how much more difficult it is to write a large check to the IRS every quarter, as opposed to having it withheld from your paycheck. OP, if you really are going to work as a 1099 contractor, plan very carefully for prepaying most of your taxes yourself. You can pay online with the IRS every quarter or more frequently if you choose. If you estimate low on what you will owe the IRS, which is easy to do, the large tax bill due the following April can be very unpleasant.
Ah, I am so used to the estimated taxes that I forgot that. But sometimes the downtime between contracts is good – I was just able to take 3 months off to move and spend time with my mom when she was ill – couldn’t do that with a permanent employer.