Do I Need Workers Compensation Insurance?

Hello and welcome to the Murray Group Mailbag.
My name is Ryan Hanley. I’m the director of marketing and sales for the Murray Group.
And the Murray Group Mailbag is a simple feature where people ask us questions all day long
through our Facebook page, through our web site, through email. I do my best to answer
each question individually in a video right here that we post on YouTube and our website
because if one person has that question we know many more do. We want to make that information easy to access
and completely free. Today’s question comes from Joseph, and Joseph owns a business in
East Greenbush, New York, and he asks, Do I need worker’s compensation insurance? So
I’m gonna answer this question as it relates to New York State. So if you have a business
in another state, all this information may not completely apply to you, but I think some
of the larger concepts so, but remember, everything I say is specific to NY state. In a general sense, if you have employees,
if you pay to do work on a job, you need worker’s compensation insurance, okay. You need worker’s
compensation insurance if you have employees, or your paying someone to do work for you
on a job. Period. Where people tend to get into trouble, where businesses tend to get
into trouble, is when they thing they are using an independent contractor, ok? So independent contractors can be very, the
best way to describe it is, the way that the tax department looks at independent contractor
is different from the way that the worker’s compensation department of New York State
looks at independent contractors. So many people think because they’re paying someone
with a W9, that they don’t need a worker’s compensation on them, because they are an
independent contractor. And unfortunately, that’s not necessarily
the case. The worker compensation department actually has a ten-point list which is used
as the guideline for determining whether someone is an independent contractor or not and you
can use the link that you see right here to visit our website, if you’re not already on
our website, and and I’ll have a link to that list on our website where you can kind of
click through and read through the list. But basically there’s ten ten points that
you have to walk through and in order for someone to be an independent contractor they
have to meet every single one of those ten points. So, it is very easy to get tripped
up by independent contractors. If you have an employee and you’re paying them a salary,
you absolutely need worker’s comp If you have independent contractor’s working for you that
can be very tricky. They need to have their own business they
need to be doing a completely different function you do the majority of the work can’t come
from you. Ten points, go check them out on our website if you haven’t or go to the state
worker’s compensation department and you can find that list there as well. Just assume
that if you’re paying someone to do work, you need worker’s comp, unless they need that
point checklist and then they can be considered an independent contractor. But be very careful with independent contractors
and make sure that if you’re paying someone to do work for you – I know I’ve said it like
10 times now, but it’s just very, very important if you’re paying someone to do work for you
there’s a very good chance worker’s compensation insurance. If you have additional questions
call your independent insurance agent and ask them specifically and they should be able
sit down with you and determine whether or not you need worker’s compensation. My name is Ryan Hanley. This has been another
episode of the Murray Group Mailbag. If you have your own question that you’d like to
be answered on this show, leave it comments below or you can visit our Facebook page.
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your question by now you can do that at [email protected], that’s [email protected] You can send us an email and ask question
in that way. Thank you, and have a great day.