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Full-Text Articles in Labor and Employment Law
Unbundling Social Security From The Payroll Tax, Henry Ordower
Unbundling Social Security From The Payroll Tax, Henry Ordower
All Faculty Scholarship
To preserve social security as a welfare program primarily for older individuals and to ameliorate the distributional inequity of funding social security across income and wealth levels, this article recommends unbundling the benefit side of social security from its longstanding payroll tax funding mechanism. The article recommends replacing the payroll tax revenue with a budget allocation from general revenues accompanied by both revenue raisers and benefit limitations. Income tax rate increases linked to repeal of the FICA tax and tax expenditure limitations would enhance income tax revenue. Modifying social security benefits from their current overinclusive, entitlement structure for all to …
Individuals As "Employees" Or "Contractors": Why It Matters What You Are Called When It Comes To Federal Taxes, Robert Eisentrout
Individuals As "Employees" Or "Contractors": Why It Matters What You Are Called When It Comes To Federal Taxes, Robert Eisentrout
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
When we file federal taxes, our individual tax burdens are affected by whether our employers and the IRS classify us as “employees” or “contractors.” Today, that distinction is not a neat one. Classifying workers as “employees” or “contractors” belies increasing similarities—like the ability to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic—between those classifications. With those increasing similarities in mind, this Note makes two arguments about the employee / contractor distinction in federal tax law. First, federal tax law draws an increasingly arbitrary and unfair line between employees and contractors given the modern substantive convergence of work done as an “employee” or …