Independent contractors have become a very complicated issue for the retailer and the dealer in the floor covering industry. The issue is whether you properly classify an individual or group when you hire them. When you hire someone as an employee, they are subject to a great many laws, e.g. you have to collect income tax for them, their contribution to social security, to unemployment, etc.
With independent contractors, those laws don’t apply. I would love to be able to tell you there’s a single 10-point test to determine whether someone should be classified as an employee or not, and if you apply all these 10 points you’ll always be correct. There actually isn’t a single test. There are two basic tests used by different agencies. But even when two agencies use the same test, they may stress different points.