Independent Contractor Compliance Blog

An auditor is deep into your worker classification practices and you realize you really weren’t ready for this.  So you decide to call your elected politician and ask for reasons.  You ask your state assembly member, governor, US Congressman, or US Senator, “Please get the tax auditor off my back.”

In the over 30 years I spent working on the Other Side, I saw this happen many times.  Taxpayers and business owners, who weren’t ready for an audit, trying to get help by contacting their elected official.

Contacting your elected official is almost always a dead end.

It shouldn’t be a surprise.  Not many of us today are happy with our politicians, on any level, or on any topic.  In this case the elected representative will probably never personally see your letter or receive your telephone call.

Let me explain:

1. A staff member will listen to your complaint or read your letter.  Each elected official has staff whose primary responsibility is to handle complaints.  Either the agency is too aggressive, or the government isn’t doing enough.  These employees spend basically their whole day taking complaints and coordinating the responses.
2. On the tax agency side there are people dedicated to communicating with the staff members of the elected officials.  So these government employees spend their whole day coordinating responses to the staff of the elected officials.  Many times these “opposing staff members” have worked together hundreds of times and are friends.
3. The government has a carefully designed procedure for handling these issues and everyone is careful not to “step over the line.”  They follow a detailed, formalized ritual to resolve the issue you have raised.
4. Unless you really have a powerful, or personal, connection you will most likely receive a carefully crafted letter, with the elected official’s “signature,” supporting the tax agency’s position and the audit will go forward.

How does this happen?

A true case of the fox investigating the raid on the henhouse.

Typically:

• The elected official’s staff member asks the agency’s staff member you are complaining about to draft a letter for the politician’s signature, because they have no knowledge of the issue.
• The agency’s staff member really isn’t an expert on the topic so he/she asks the auditor’s manager to craft the letter and send it back up the line.  The manager, of course asks the auditor…
• The letter you receive will read as if the politician wrote it personally and explain his findings supporting the agency’s actions.

But that’s not all.  Most politicians, especially at the federal level and the higher offices in the state, use a signature machine, so the politicians never even see the letter.  That’s why I say calling an elected official for help is usually a dead end.

Ultimately, the best defense is hiring a dedicated expert to help you be ready now, before you are the subject of an employment tax audit or a worker misclassification challenge.