More Become Independent Contractors

If you have or were using independent contractors, you know California has complicated it over the past couple of years. The California Supreme Court established the ABC test, which made it very hard to have contractors doing anything related to customers. Then AB5 clarified certain positions could be classified as contractors. While this opened the door a bit, it’s still been hard for most companies to hire contractors and be confident with that decision.

Governor Newsom just signed AB2257, which now opens that door a bit wider. Workers that may now qualify as independent contractors include:

  • Certain occupations in connection with creating, marketing, promoting, or distributing sound recordings or musical compositions.
  • A musician or musical group for the purpose of a single-engagement live performance event, except in certain conditions.
  • An individual performance artist presenting material that is their original work, creative in character, and the result of which depends primarily on the individual’s invention, imagination, or talent.
  • Still photographer, photojournalist, videographer, or photo editor, as defined, who works under a written contract that specifies certain terms.
  • People who provide services to a digital content aggregator, as defined, by a still photographer, photojournalist, videographer, or photo editor.
  • Fine artist, freelance writer, translator, editor, content contributor, advisor, narrator, cartographer, producer, copy editor, illustrator, or newspaper cartoonist who works under a written contract that specifies certain terms.
  • People who provide underwriting inspections and other services for the insurance industry, a manufactured housing salesperson, subject to certain obligations, people engaged by an international exchange visitor program, consulting services, animal services, and competition judges with specialized skills.
  • Licensed landscape architects, specialized performers teaching master classes, registered professional foresters, real estate appraisers and home inspectors, and feedback aggregators.

AB2257 revises the conditions when business service providers providing contracted services to another business are exempt (from the ABC test). There is also an exemption for business-to-business relationships between 2 or more sole proprietors. The bill states the hiring entity need only satisfy all of the conditions of one of the exemption provisions to qualify for the exemption from the ABC Test.

However, having your profession listed above is not the only criteria. AB2257 provides us with a lot of workers who may qualify as independent contractors but there are a lot of details not listed here. At the very least, these workers must meet the usual qualifications of actually looking and acting like a true business. This means they, ideally, have a business name, business license, liability insurance, marketing collateral, and definitely more than one client. You may still want to avoid working with those people who aren’t taking their work seriously enough to create a real business out of it.

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