Welcome to today’s episode of The Murray Group Mailbag, where we answer your questions about insurance. Today’s question comes from Joe from East Greenbush, NY and Joe asks:
Do I need workers compensation insurance?
Watch the video below or read the video’s transcript if you don’t have the capability of watching the video. If you’d like to submit your own question, you can do so in the comment section below this post, on our Facebook page or you can email us at insurance@murraygrp.com.
Do I need workers compensation insurance?
Watch this short video to get the whole answer.
Video Transcript:
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. If you search for the Murray Group, you’ll find us on Facebook. And if you wanna send your question by now you can do that at insurance@MurrayGRP.com, that’s insurance@MurrayGRP.com.
You can send us an email and ask question in that way. Thank you, and have a great day.
This video is part of an ongoing series dedicated to helping consumers get answers to their insurance questions.
If you’d like to follow along on YouTube, connect below:
If you have questions about your insurance program or if you would like to receive a proposal for workers compensation insurance coverage, please give us a call at 518-777-7777 or email us at insurance@murraygrp.com. You can also click here to contact us through our website.
We’re here to help you find peace of mind.
Thank you and good luck,
Ryan Hanley, CIC
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