Publication 51 |
2000 Tax Year |
2. Who Are Employees?
Generally, employees are defined either under common law or under
special statutes for certain situations.
Employee status under common law.
Generally, a worker who performs services for you is your employee
if you can control what will be done and how it will be done. This is
so even when you give the employee freedom of action. What matters is
that you have the right to control the details of how the services are
performed. Get Pub. 15-A, Employer's Supplemental Tax
Guide, for more information on how to determine whether an individual
providing services is an independent contractor or an employee.
You are responsible for withholding and paying employment taxes for
your employees. You are also required to file employment tax returns.
These requirements do not apply to independent contractors. The rules
discussed in this publication apply only to workers who are your
employees.
In general, you are an employer of farmworkers if your employees:
- Raise or harvest agricultural or horticultural products on a
farm.
- Work in connection with the operation, management,
conservation, improvement, or maintenance of your farm and its tools
and equipment.
- Handle, process, or package any agricultural or
horticultural commodity if you produced over half of the commodity
(for a group of more than 20 operators, all of the commodity).
- Do work related to cotton ginning, turpentine, or gum resin
products.
- Do housework in your private home if it is on a farm that is
operated for profit. (You may report the taxes for household employees
separately. See sections 3 and 8.)
For this purpose, the term "farm" includes stock, dairy,
poultry, fruit, fur-bearing animal, and truck farms, as well as
plantations, ranches, nurseries, ranges, greenhouses or other similar
structures used primarily for the raising of agricultural or
horticultural commodities, and orchards.
Farmwork does not include reselling activities that do not involve
any substantial activity of raising agricultural or horticultural
commodities, such as a retail store or a greenhouse used primarily for
display or storage.
The table on page 19, How Do Employment Taxes Apply to
Farmwork?, distinguishes between farm and nonfarm activities,
and also addresses rules that apply in special situations.
Crew Leaders
You are an employer of farmworkers if you are a crew leader. A crew
leader is a person who furnishes and pays (either on his or her own
behalf or on behalf of the farm operator) workers to do farmwork for
the farm operator. If there is no written agreement between you and
the farm operator stating that you are his or her employee and if you
pay the workers (either for yourself or for the farm operator), then
you are a crew leader.
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