Dear MSPA Member:
If you were on the teleconference with Russ Hollrah last week, you know it's critical for MSPA members to immediately begin contacting their Senators and Congressional Representatives to implore their support to protect the Independent Contractor business model. If you were not on the call, we encourage you to listen to the recording, which is in the Member Teleconference Recordings section of the MSPA website (in the Member Only area).
It is important for you to make your message personal; a cut-and-paste message that looks just like hundreds of others can do more harm than good. We ask that you contact your Senators and your Congressional Representatives in three ways:
Call their Washington or home district offices
Send them an email or submit a web-form message to them
Write and mail a letter to them (and copy us at the address on the bottom of this message or send a copy by fax or email)
Your telephone message will, of necessity, be shorter and more "to-the-point" than written messages. The phone message should emphasize the bold-faced messages below. Your written messages should convey, in your own words, some or all of the following [messages in italic are secondary but reinforce the argument you want to make--you should choose the points that feel best to you):
I understand that the Congress is considering certain legislative proposals that would increase the financial risks to companies that do business with independent contractors or that would repeal the protections provided by Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978.
I strongly urge you to oppose any such proposals.
Independent contractors represent a vibrant sector of our economy.
Many independent contractors have chosen to operate as self-employed service providers because they have lost their job with a large corporation and do not want to work as an employee ever again, or because their family commitments do not permit them to work the type of standard schedules that employment generally requires.
New laws that increase the risks to companies that do business with independent contractors will result in legitimate self-employed service providers going out of business, because their clients will be afraid to do business with them. Such laws overtly discriminate against the self-employed.
Many companies that qualify for Section 530 protection need the certainty that Section 530 provides in order to raise essential outside capital, to plan for the company's long-term needs and, one day, to sell the business at a fair price.
The owners of such companies need that certainty in order to have confidence that a business model they have invested years of their lives developing will remain viable in the future and will not be decimated by their own government. In the absence of Section 530, a business owner would be subject to risk every day that the IRS could examine the company and destroy its business model by the reclassifying independent contractors as its employees.
IRS data indicate that the federal tax compliance rate for independent contractors whose earnings are reported on Forms 1099 is 97%, which is only 2 percentage points lower than the 99% compliance rate for employees.
Because an essential requirement of Section 530 is that a company complies with the Form 1099 reporting requirements with respect to covered workers, a repeal of Section 530 only affects the independent contractors whose compliance rate is already 97%. It leaves completely untouched the truly noncompliant taxpayers whose earnings are not subject to any information reporting.
If independent contractors were to react by establishing their own corporations, IRS data suggest that their tax compliance would decline, because their earnings would no longer be subject to any information reporting.
Now is an especially inappropriate time for the government to take any action that will depress economic activity, especially in the entrepreneurial sector.
If you have other "bullet-point" issues you think other MSPA members might find useful in crafting their own messages, please send them to us via email to jswinburn@challenge-management.com and we will add them to the list.
Thank you for your support in this very important effort.
John Swinburn
Executive Director
Mystery Shopping Providers Association
4230 LBJ Freeway, Ste. 414
Dallas, TX 75244 USA
Phone: 972-406-1104
Fax: 972-755-2561
www.mysteryshop.org
Contacting Your Senators and Congressional Representatives
Click here for a complete list of Senators and their addresses and other contact information.
Click here for a complete list of Congressional Representatives and their addresses and other contact information.
To find who represents you in Congress (both Senate and House of Representatives), simply go to this link:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml.
You can find detailed contact information for your Congressional representative at https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml.
You can find detailed contact information for your Senators at: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
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