Tag Archives: independent contractors

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Amy Sample Ward and Gene Takagi kick off the New Year with what they’ll be keeping eyes on this year. They delve into artificial intelligence (AI); the presidential election; donor advised funds; workers’ rights; and more. Amy is our technology contributor and CEO of NTEN. Gene is our legal contributor and managing attorney at NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.

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Nonprofit Radio for August 7, 2015: Labor Law & IRS Helps Your Marketing

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Tom Wassel: Labor Law

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Attorney Thomas Wassel, partner at Cullen and Dykman, says nonprofits often make mistakes around employee versus independent contractor (it’s not enough to pay them by invoice!) and when bringing in volunteers and interns. We’ll keep you on the right side of the law. (Originally broadcast on June 6, 2014)

 

 

Yigit Uctum: IRS Helps Your Marketing

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Yigit Uctum is a CPA with Wegner CPAs. He’s got ideas for using your IRS Form 990 in your marketing. See, it does have a purpose. (Originally broadcast on September 12, 2014)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d grow a ganglion cyst if you handed me the thought that you missed today’s show labor law attorney thomas was cell partner at cullen and eichmann says non-profits often make mistakes around employee versus independent contractor it’s not enough to be paying them buy-in voice and when bringing in volunteers and interns, we’ll keep you on the right side of the law. This was originally broadcast on june sixth last year, and iris helps your marketing heat coach. Tomb is a c p a with wagner cpas. He’s got ideas for using your form? Uh nine ninety in your marketing. It does have a purpose that was originally broadcast on september twelfth. Twenty fourteen so today, it’s law and taxes which on non-profit radio are never boring on tony’s take two. Start your plan e-giving here responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising you need more prospects, they’re smart technology will find them pursuing dot com here is tom marcel and labor law. I’m very glad that subject of labor law for non-profit springs tom will sell to the studio. He’s, a partner in the law firm cullen and dyckman in garden city, new york. And in new york city, he’s been advising employers on a wide range of labor and employment law matters since nineteen eighty three. He is president elect of the long island, new york chapter of the labor and employment relations association. Thomas l welcome to the studio. Nice to nice to be in your studio, tony. Good to see you here. I’m glad we could do it face to face. So employees versus independent contractor, it turns out, is not enough to just pay somebody buy-in voice. And then, while love they’re they’re an independent contractor. That’s absolutely enough if you want to get into trouble. But it’s not enough if you want to do it right. Okay, basically, whenever one person is performing services for another person or another company, the presumption is that there are an employee and that with everything that that entails, including federal taxes, state taxes, worker’s compensation benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, employee health benefits, things like that in order for them to be classified properly as an independent contract that there’s a number of tests that they need to meet and if they don’t meet those tests and accompany miss classifies employees big trouble with the department of labor. Okay, we’ll talk about the misclassification ramifications, and so now we’re talking about federal and state, the the where where is this test? This test is from the i r s and then and then well, is that the eleven points is that from the irs? Absolutely the irs the internal revenue service has an eleven point test, which is used for determining whether or not you have to take out taxes from people’s wages, okay, but every state also has its own version of the test. They’re they’re pretty similar, but in terms of whether or not you need to contribute for worker’s compensation benefits or unemployment insurance benefits, and they all apply pretty much the same type of tests to determine the employee status. Okay, so it sounds like you’re in pretty good shape if you’re following the irs test, which we’re going to talk about, but you still need to enquire at the state level or or you’re not, because you’re not a hundred percent safe if you’re doing. Following just the irs that’s, that’s absolutely true in other words, each state can have its own rules and merely complying with the federal law that that’s fine in terms of federal taxation. But certain states have have stricter rules with regard to treating people as independent contractors versus employees. So you need to see counsel in the state in which you practice. I practice in new york, so you know, my comments about any law would be limited to anything in new york state and federal law. Okay, we’ll stick with the federal with the caveat that you should check the state level, but you’re on your you’re well, on your way if you’re if you’re complying with the irs regs, i imagine, absolutely okay, okay, so are we these these eleven items? Eyes is basically around the relationship between the employed, the non-profit and the person doing the work. Absolutely the key elements in the test without without trying to go over check checklist abila talk on some of them were good, some of it’s, a degree of control that thie and i’m going to go. I’m going to use the term employer here, even though we may. Say it’s a contractual relationship, okay, but no, we’ll say or the employer of the company, the relationship between the company and the person performing the service is in an employment relationship. For example, the company tells the employees where to work, what time to show up what their duties are? Ah, and what do they report to who they’re going to supervise if they’re going to supervise anybody? Things like that in a relationship like that that’s that tends towards the employer employee relationship as opposed to an independent contractor for an independent contractor, you basically say here’s the job, here’s here’s, what i want you to accomplish, maybe cem general guidelines do it when you think it’s appropriate, although there may be deadlines set, but i’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’m not going to supervise you on a day to day basis. I’m not going to provide you with the materials to do it. You do it on your own and i’m simply going to pay you a fee, which is another important distinction there the fee basis versus an hourly or salary type basis? Okay, we’ll get to that. You you touched. On something that i want to explore a little bit, the place where the work is done. So you you can’t have the person always coming to your office to perform the work, know that you can’t have the person doing the work in your office. But it really that would depend on the nature of the work. For example, if, if you if you have employees doing the same work, and now you’re going to bring in somebody else from the outside to sit alongside your employees and do the same work, well, that’s an indicator not not it’s, not a single point test but it’s, an indicator of an employer employee relationship. Now, if this person has his or her own business on the outside, has business cards may work from more than one company at the same time, or one after another on it, since you’re simply hiring that outside company to perform services for a limited period of time, well, that it tends to lean more towards the independent contractor relationship. How do we balance these eleven? Which we’ll get into some detail about some of the others too? But is it ah, like majority, if you have, if you have six out of the eleven year okay, andi it’s going to go one way or the other based on a majority? Or how does it work? Well, there is no bright line test. Those lawyers like to say, i think to some extent you apply the duck test if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck it’s very fact specific and a trier of fact, whether it would be through the department of labor or worker’s compensation board or in a court of law would look at all of these factors and say, well, okay, the control factor tends to lean towards employees, but the independent company factor tends to lean towards independent contractor and way all of these factors together, and then come up with an answer. Okay, so these eleven points are are the things that iris is going to consider? This is what they’re going to look at, and they’re going to put it all together. And they’re going to make a decision. Absolutely. Okay. And i guess it would work similarly at the state level. Like when you mention department of labor. We’re talking about the state department of labor could be state of the state or the united states department of labor. There’s both and and they’re very interested because independent contractors aren’t entitled to overtime or minimum wage or anything like that. You you pay them a fee or you pay them. You pay a company a fee to do something and that’s. Fine. But if their employees and they work more than forty hours in a week, they’re entitled to overtime. Yeah, we may have time to get more into that. Right. Okay. Um, i think we will. Actually, um, what are some of the other side? The other factors in these in these eleven points? Well, as i mentioned it’s the ah it’s. How people are paid. Yeah. That’s a good one. Sorry. Let’s. Talk about that one. The fee versus fee versus salary. Right. Well, typically, an employee may get an hourly wage. May get a weekly salary. It’s generally, the relationship is often not always but often sort of. Open ended that is to say, we’re going to hire you, not necessarily for two week barrier or until you finish this job, but we’re going to hire you as an employee and keep you on, but we pay you on a pay check. Ah, as opposed to an independent contractor who would normally be paid through some voucher system or through through ah, obviously issuing a ten, ninety nine, which is the tax form for independent contractors and might be in a lump sum. It might be in regular payments, but it’s not based on number of hours worked or anything like that that again, depending on how you structure the deal, that would tend to lean more towards employees or more towards independent contractor. What about? I think you mentioned giving someone the tools to do the work so you shouldn’t be giving them ah, laptop tto do the work or or other things or certainly office space dedicated in the office? I mean, that’s tending to look like employment, right? When you’re giving them that stuff? Absolutely. If i say, come into my place of business and i’m going to give you everything you need to do. The job and you don’t have toe put anything on the table other than what i give you that’s the hallmark of an employee, as opposed to an independent contractor who brings their own knowledge, skills and tools to the table and does the job that you’re paying them to do. We’ll go out for a short break, and when we come back, tell marcel and i’m going to keep talking about this and then we’ll get into volunteers and interns, and then i believe we will have time to for overtime for employees you’re supposed be paying your employees overtime. Do you maybe want to turn this off? If you’re listening in the office on monday, only the bosses want to hear this. We’ll get into all that stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Dahna welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Let’s, send some live listener love arco, idaho and orlando, florida live listener love to you very glad you with us let’s, go abroad! Seoul, korea manu haserot, islamabad, pakistan i’m sorry. I don’t know how to greet you in, uh in is it pasha pashtun? Passion is that i’m not sure what, but live listener love to you in islamabad, irrespective of how i would say it in your in your tongue, in your language bonem changing china, always welcoming the chinese lots of listeners. Ni hao, nagoya and tokyo, japan sending you konnichi wa and there are others we’ll get to them kuwait also, i wanted to get to kuwait. Um attorney thomas l let’s see if you’re if you’re the person who’s doing the work is getting their income from a bunch of different places. Is that that’s that’s? One of the factors, isn’t it that’s, clearly one of the factors, and and that would certainly militate or tend towards a finding of an independent contractor relationship? If you hire a company, the company may have its own letterhead may have its own invoices may have its own business cards may have an ad in the yellow pages for those of us who still actually use paper yellow pages or maybe a gn internet list thing nowadays. So if you hold yourself out as an independent company and maybe even filed company tax returns on have a company workers compensation policy, things like that that again would lean towards the independent contractor relationship rather than employees. If you are ah found by the irs to have misclassified people doing the work, would you expect that the irs is going to report to your state department of labor that they’ve found a misclassification? That’s, that’s a really good question, and i get asked that those kinds of questions a lot from lots of different employers, i tend to represent employers, and my understanding is no, they don’t necessarily do that. That particularly if you settle the case, the words that come to you and say you messed up, you need to pay x amount, and if you settle it voluntarily, they’re not going to go broadcasting it to the world so that there could be more agencies to come and knock on your door, because that would discourage you from settling in the first place that’s not to say that other agencies won’t find out about it. And certainly if the case were public, if you would have to go to court, which is a public record and other agencies saw that they could be knocking on your door as well, where do you see employers messing up? Well, it’s again, it’s the any of any of these factors will any or any role these factors? I have clients, and obviously i’m not going to mention names. Uh, i brought you for so it’s um, provocative, the name dropping. All right, i thought i’d like to keep practising law for a few more you’re not retired, they yeah, i have i have clients that have they’ll bring people in and they treat them as independent contractors and they say, well, they’re only going to be here for two months. I’m hiring them for a special project and i say yes, hiring see, that was the key word there on it doesn’t matter if you’re hyre it is a temporary employee or a permanent employee that’s one factor, but not not controlling temporary employees, their employees, so you have to treat them as contractors, and i’ve had a number of audits fromthe state workers compensation, border unemployment insurance division that come in and say you’re not paying premiums to these people because you’re not treating them as employees. Pay up. What? What are the penalties let’s talk about the federal level? What would you expect from the irs if ur misclassifying? Well again? In most cases, if if you own up to the to the mistake, you’ll certainly have to pay what’s owed but safe for the i r s not only will you have to pay what the employers share of the taxes wouldn’t really be, and they also have to pay the employees share of the tactics so security taxes that should have been paid exactly pay both the employer and the employee because the employer messes up, the irs isn’t going to go to the employees and say, by the way, some of that money you got, we want you to give some of it back. It’s, the employer’s responsibility to properly pay the employees. Okay, so the back taxes that were owed, what else? What else might be expect? Well, there, there could be civil penalties involved to or if it was done knowingly over a long period of time, with no knowing that you were violating the law usually second or third offenders, there could be some more severe penalties involved as well, you’re always welcome teo disagree with young arrests, right on contest there, their belief that you’re misclassifying absolutely, you know, just just cause the irs says so doesn’t make it so. But the presumption is that these people are employees, right, and it’s up to the employer to prove based on the law that these people are actually independent contractors. So if you if you want to fight them, you better have a pretty good case. Let’s move teo volunteers and interns what? What are what are non-profits often getting wrong around these? Well, the good news for not for not-for-profits we call them not-for-profits in new york, but non-profits same, the good news for non-profits is that you’re allowed tohave volunteers in the in the in the in the for-profit sector, you basically can’t have volunteers. Anybody who does work for you has to be paid, but in the in the nonprofit sector, you can’t have volunteers, but there are some rules about that as well. The work that’s being volunteered for can’t be the same kind of work that’s otherwise being done. In other words, you can’t have a paid clerical person sitting at a desk and then have somebody else come in and say, well, i’m going to volunteer and i’m going to do the same work sitting side by side the paid pearl really? All right, so let’s, let’s taken example of that suppose closed. You have employees that are preparing mailings. You’ve got a five thousand piece mailing going out and you don’t hyre ah, male house, you’re doing it inside and you’ve got people stuffing in printing, stuffing envelopes, putting stamps on, and then you bring some volunteers in to do that same work side by side with employees. That’s that’s, not a volunteer. I’d be very concerned about that. If i was the employer and i if i was their attorney, i would be tell saying we need to take a long, hard look at this because again, people sitting side by side, some people are being paid. Some people are, quote, unquote, volunteering very dangerous situation, even if the volunteers volunteered. I mean, even if they walked in and they love the mission, they’ve said, i want to help you. How can i help? And you said, well, we could use ten hours on, you know, over the weekend to put this mailing together well not-for-profits tend to be generally charitable, religious or religious organizations and the servant public purpose and that’s why they’re allowed tohave volunteers to some extent, but to the extent that you’re basically just doing the same work as other employees and saying, i don’t want to get paid for it, the law doesn’t really sanction such things. Oh, my, okay, i got to take a little tension because you mentioned for-profit companies, and i’m interested in that on the intern side. What about all the unpaid internships that are coming right now? It’s, it’s, summertime, what about those? Well, and you read about them all the time in the paper about the irs or the part you read about them in the new york journal? I don’t not seeing it in the where i’m seeing in popular, more more general press well, you get for-profit ce are allowed to have interns, but not that you can’t just but but i had on somebody and say, hi, you’re an intern, you’re going to work for me and you’re not going to get paid that would be violating the minimum wage laws for, among other things, but somebody can provide an internship if under certain circumstances, if they’re getting some sort of academic credit from an outside institution, if they are getting some sort of actual training from you that’s not specifically tailored to your organisation, but but taylor to their field of study, if they understand from the outset that they’re not going to get paid and that’s an internship also, it has to be a relationship where i understand from the outset otherwise it’s indentured servitude you tell them you’re getting gonna get paid, then they don’t they don’t see a paycheck. That’s ah, there’s got okay. That’s clearly got to be rolled. Believe it or not that’s that’s what? I passed that spelled out there. They have to understand that somebody’s done it. Yeah, all right, on. And also, they’re supposed to actually, because they’re an intern and learning from you, they’re supposed to be, if if anything, and impediments to the business not ah. Bonus to the business. In other words, if the business says we’re going to hyre fifty interns to do all sorts of work for us and make money for us that’s not really a bona fide internship, the purpose of the internship, the primary purpose is to give training to the intern, not to make money for the company. And if it’s really a benefit to the company that’s one of the factors that will be looked at to say these air not truly entrance. Okay, thank you for taking little digression in tow. For-profit i love it, you know, you you have these answers on top, your head man xero no notes, which i admire, i don’t like i don’t like notes, really? I have notes, but it is just off the top percent wonderful. I’ve been doing it for thirty plus years. I know you start to learn it if that helps. Yeah, yeah. So let’s go back to the non-profit side there are so the general rule is that you can’t have unpaid work as volunteers, but then there are these exceptions that we were starting to get into right if it’s a bona fide organization charitable. Organization and people are truly coming and say, i want to lend a hand to do you were having were having a blood drive or we’re having a a special event, and i’m a community member i’m going to come in and volunteer to give some of my time to help you that’s a true volunteer, but again, if if they’re volunteering simply to do work that the company not-for-profits would otherwise be paying for that’s a problem, employees of the not-for-profits basically can’t volunteer to give away free work. That’s interesting. I wonder if that comes up much. I don’t know. Well, if you see it well, i haven’t seen it, but it’s addressed in a number of decisions or regulations where somebody’s tried it. Yeah, obviously what’s in there? Yeah, right. That’s. Interesting. Okay, if you haven’t, i’d say you have an employee working for enough for-profit and and and there’s some child care. You’re going to sit with some child kind of simple. I don’t want to use the term baby sitting because that sounds majority, but some sort of ah monitoring situation, which is not within the normal scope of that employees work. That might be okay for a volunteer for the employees, but certainly the employees can volunteer to do additional work that employees already getting paid for. And where do you see non-profits making mistakes around the volunteer and in turn, well, i get calls from from some of my not non-profits and so, you know, we’ve got we’ve got all these people are in here and, you know, they’re here for, you know, ten or fifteen hours a week doing all this stuff, and i say, really, what’s your first question was where something well, i say, well, what are they doing? Art? Do you have other people that you’re paying to do the same work? And they’re working side by side? Are there are these people already employed by you? Because if they are that’s major red flag on dh again, if they’re duplicating or substituting their substituting for paid employees, that’s, that’s a problem? We’ve got somebody who’s out on a totally leave elearning leave a family medical leave act type of leave, so they’re gonna be out for twelve weeks, so we’re gonna have a volunteer filling for twelve weeks, okay? Do you have a sound of a klaxon in? Here or, you know piela only like that. But that’s just my voice is all we have is scary enough. Thrill enough weak enough as it is. That’s very bad. So paternity leave maternity leave. You can’t have a volunteer filling in. You’re basically saying, i’m going to have somebody do the same work as a paid employee, but i’m not going to pay them. No lost don’t let you do that. All right? I think that’s very interesting. All right, so what do we do, teo? To remedy this. So when your clients are then calling and there, then finding out in this call that they’re they’re running afoul, what do we do next? Well, i tell them aside, i’m obligated to do as an attorney. You should change this and you should start treating people correctly going forward because every day that you’re in violation of the labor laws or the or the tax code is is a new problem. If you change things today or tomorrow and start treating people properly, pay them, then you don’t really have a problem. And by the way, all you have to do to comply with most laws is pay minimum. Wage and you know you don’t you could have people have clerical people making fifteen dollars an hour. I need somebody to fill in, and i’m just going to pay the minimum wage. You can do that, you just can’t pay him nothing. You can’t have them volunteer if they’re not truly bona fide volunteers, can you work out some alternate form of compensation besides, besides money? Like maybe they get some benefits of services from the organization, i guess sort of a barter arrangements, but i’m thing thinking of is that is that possible barter arrangements are legal, but their taxable i don’t represent any barter companies, but i happen to have a close friend who’s involved in a bartering company, and i know that when party a’s trading goods or services with party be, both sides are issued ten, ninety nines and and the company, the bartering company, will report that to the irs. So if you just say instead of paying you seven twenty five an hour, which is the federal minimum wage, it’s hyre in new york state and a lot of other states, but instead of paying you seven twenty five an hour for forty hours, which is with two, two hundred ninety eight dollars a week. I’m going to give you two hundred ninety dollars, worth of free food, that’s that’s a taxable event and frankly, it doesn’t comply with the law. The fair labor standards act, which is the federal law that requires people get paid, requires that you get paid in cash or the equivalent of cash, not in goods and services they’re certain deductions allowed, but not completely excellent. Now we’re talking about federal and state law here, a cz well around the volunteers and interns, absolutely okay, so we’re talking mostly federal, but with the same qualification you need to check about check what the standards are in in your state are you? Are you still pretty well on your way to compliance? If you’re if you’re complying with what the irs requires, like like we said over on the independent contractor side e, i would say, you know, qualified lee, if that’s a word, if you’re complying with the federal rules, you are more than likely quality complying with state rules, but i certainly can’t give that as a guarantee without taking a look at the state rules, understand? Okay, let’s, spend a little a little time. We’re just a couple more minutes on overtime for employees. What is the problem here that you see? Big problem is that certain employees aren’t being paid overtime because employers think they don’t have to. And the biggest fallacy, the biggest myth that i see is and and employers and employees both believed this is that if you paid a salary, you don’t get overtime that’s not true, you need to be paid a salary in order to be considered exempt from overtime, but on ly, certain employees performing certain duties are exempt from overtime the main ones. I don’t talk about those one of those executives, administrators or administrative xero and professionals, so if you’re ah not for-profit ifyou’re ah, counselor, a psychologist, psychiatrist, a professional you’re not in your pay and you’re paid on a salary you’re not entitled to overtime, but you may be a highly highly paid administrative person who works closely with management. You may be exempt from overtime, but if you are a lower levels let’s, say, clerical person lower simply on the orc chart. Not in terms of your worth, but and you’re you don’t. Have it a lot of discretion and control doesn’t matter if you paid on a salary you’re entitled to overtime. If you work more than forty hours in a work week and that’s not waivable, you can’t agree not to take it. You can’t enter into a contract dipped in blood notarized doesn’t matter. You have to get paid for all hours worked at time and a half and not less than time and a half. Pay attention to the labor law. Thomas l, a partner in the law firm of cullen c u l l e n and die kayman d y k m a n in garden city, new york and also in new york city. Thomas l thank you very, very much in my pleasure mine as well. Tony’s take two and irs helps your marketing coming up first. Pursuant, they do full service fund-raising from web based tools for most of our audience small and midsize non-profits two on site campaign counsel for organizations that need that pursuance ah, prospector platform finds donors in your database who are ready for upgrade these are the people who may be giving you twenty dollars a month, and they’re ready to give one hundred a month, or the twenty dollars, a year. You know they’re in there, but they’re not so easy to find. Prospector platform does that it finds thes upgradeable donors so that you’re focused on the people that you should be spending the most time with not people who aren’t willing and able teo upgrade. Therefore you raise more money. You find your upgrade prospects who are hiding in plain sight. Prospector platform is at pursuant dot com my video this week is start your plans giving program here there are lots of reasons why charitable bequests, which our gift in wills are the most popular planned gift. Ah, i tick off a bunch of reasons that make request marketing the way to start your plan giving program and for a small shop that may be where you stop perfectly respectable it’s all in the video and that is at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, seventh of august thirty first show of the year here is heat, coach, tomb and irs helps your marketing you touch tomb he’s, a senior manager at wagner cps, he has his mba master of accountancy and is a certified public accountant. He’s also a certified fraud examiner, he works exclusively with tax exempt organizations and oversees the firm’s form nine ninety nationwide preparation practice eat manages wagner’s, new york city office they’re at wagner cps dot com he’s here in the studio to talk about the irs and how it helps your marketing. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. My pleasure, it’s. Cool. Glad you’re in studio um, the form nine ninety this is i thought this was strictly a burden and something to be not avoid it. We can’t avoid it, but there’s something to be done and kind of put in the closet. You don’t think so well, you’re right. A lot ofthe organization leaders thinks that it’s a burden and actually it’s it’s a great opportunity for organizations to show the world that all the good things that they’ve done in the in the year, and then it’s also a good opportunity for them. Um, tell the words how validate their run and in the past this forest scene, justus the farm files it tires and on ly to be shown ah potential donors or anybody coming to your office and basically asking for it. And now it’s vital they available on the web, especially the most common is the guide star. And because it’s out there it it gives an opportunity for organization to the marketing tool ok, and not only guide store, but state attorneys general, a lot of them have them. Can a lot of organizations put the nine ninety on their site themselves? Yes, it’s a sort of transparency, for example, in new york every not-for-profits lee, just with new york that files annual report with the state off new york they’re nine ninety, along with their financial statements, are on their website. So your advice is to think of this as a marketing tool it’s an opportunity? Yes, so if you see it as just a burden, and as most organizations currently do and don’t get enough attention, it can potentially hurt you. So i think about is some organizations for some, organ says is true that the nine nineties seen more than they’ll annual report, but they spent all the time and energy on the annual report make it perfect, but they only spent maybe a fraction off the time to get the nine ninety ready for filing, and we’re gonna have some. Time to talk about this. But you even suggest that people beyond accountant’s contribute to the nine. Ninety their final way. We’ll have a chance to talk about that. That’s. I love that advice. Okay, let’s. Just make sure that everybody understands what we mean. Nine, ninety, there are there are three nine nineties and you’re the expert. So when were you acquainted with the three? Yeah, the. Depending on the size ofthe organization, the organizations can file three different ninety forms. If they are under fifty thousand dollars in revenue. What they can do is they can file a form called nine ninety and which is also known as the postcard return and it’s, just basic information and a statement saying that the revenues were less than fifty thousand dollars. Okay, and with some states like new york, if you are over twenty five, then you have to file the night. Nineties eve, which is the next step. So organizations that are in revenues under two hundred thousand and in assets under five hundred thousand, they can file this form nine ninety easy, which is a shorter form. And the larger organization about the threshold can fire. They have. To file the form nine. Ninety, which is longer so just like we have individual ten forties and ten. Forty easy. Exactly. Nine. Ninety and nine. Ninety easy and then also the nine. Ninety n write really small for the under fifty thousand dollars in revenue. Right? But you raise an interesting point. Sometimes. It’s state regulations that govern which nine. Ninety you have to submit is that is that right? Could you mention new york? Yeah, a certain threshold for the easy. Right. So you have to look to your state and also to the i r s exactly. Okay, exactly. We’re not talking about the nine, ninety filing requirements here. Just i digressed a little bit. We have talked about the nine, ninety in the past. Especially with with jean takagi. So you could find those shows in the past. But we want to focus on the nine, ninety as a marketing tool. And part of your advice is that even if you’re able teo file the shorter form, you might want to do one that’s the next level up. Exactly. It depends on the purpose ofthe how you’re going to use it. For example, if you are a small organization under fifty thousand dollars. You may want to file the nine. Ninety easy to get your nine ninety on guidestar. So or ah, a lot of foundations, for example. They would like you to stop mitt at nine. Ninety easy or a nine. Ninety with grant applications. And, um, that’s. Another reason why you may wanna files piled the longer form in this case. And if you are ah going after donors and even if you are a small organization, if you can show that guarding all these good covenant practices and all these other things is just like, well, run is a large organization. I think it’s also helps it, but it’s getting funds. But if you do not have a purpose, i think it always cost more time and money to file the longer form. So i think it has to be ah, i violated in for individual circumstances. Fair enough, but something to consider. And i just love the different perspective is what i wanted to have you on the show. Different perspective of the nine. Ninety that it’s, you know, as we said, it’s not just no longer just buried anymore, but to look at it as a zoo marketing tool and therefore has to be consistent with all your other the what is the traditional marketing tools, right? Exactly? Yeah, for example, you don’t want to confused the word with sending mixed messages if your annual report is saying one thing and if you’re ninety saying another thing than it confuses people. So that’s one ofthe reasons why certain parts ofthe the nine ninety should not be done prepared by the countenance. It should be prepared by people who is also preparing other other marketing materials. Excellent. Okay, so let’s, get into some of the different place is in the form nine. Ninety, where you see marketing opportunities, what’s the you like thea program service. Accomplishments? Yeah. Where? Where is that? Where will people find that? On the night that could be on the second page off for my love. I love that you’re a nine. Ninety expert. You he doesn’t. He does not have the nine, ninety here in front of him. Which is what, like seventeen pages or something leaves twelve o on the schedule. And then the school was one of my many more starita he does not have a nine. Ninety here in studio with me is so when i asked him, like, what section is it? Andi knows the page, so i okay, you have the expert here, all of that. All right. So, um, you know, your your practices nine nineties. I love it all right. To the program. Service accomplishments. Your program serves accomplished. Mons to page two. Part three. It’s beautiful. Basically, organisations get the chance here. This is like the free marketing or pretended to tell the world the all the great things that you have accomplished in the in the past year and latto off times despite tires. Instructions. This is one place iris helps you market, as you mentioned, is in the instructions i response you to be specific. They want you to use non financial data, but a lot of organizations just they see there’s a burden. So year after year, they repeat the same thing. And the and the nine ninety preparation is buried in their finance department or of the outside consultant who’s doing it right. And they just want to know when it’s done exactly what you can’t fill. You need a number for page four line. Ninety three i don’t know, like, you know, you probably rolling your eyes. Oh, my god, what an amateur question ninety three’s not on page four, for christ sake, but that’s just the thing is just buried until it’s ready for signature basically right? It’s? Not so who? So we can have program officers doing the program service accomplishment section or something like that, right? So basic, the its funding to say this take like a food pantry. It’s one thing to say that you have served meals to low income people in the community and it’s another thing toe give some more specific you can say piela, sir, different fifty thousand different people eighty thousand meals during the years, so it gives more, more basically more impact. And people are seeing this on guide star and on your website. And of course, it needs to be consistent with your other marketing material. Exactly. School what? What else? What other opportunities to see in that section? So i’ll give you another example of that because, like, if you’re a membership organization, try to use it to recruit members and you fear with conferences wanting to say you spent hundred thousand dollars in this conference is another thing to say. Our conference was attended by twelve hundred people. We had sixty different sessions. You can name some off the station, including x y z. And we also had to networking opportunities again like this is anything you can tell tow people join you as a member for a membership organization. And can anything that you see that would attract donors are whoever you are trying to calm me. It’s like. All right, cool. Very good governance. There’s the governance section is this the section on the nine. Ninety relieve the governance? Yeah. There’s a section on ninety nine on the nine. Ninety deaths as out ofthe questions about the governor inspection number part part six off your nine nine beautiful love, the basically in that part, it’s asking out ofthe question some of these questions, such as, um, whistle blower policy and document destruction policy. These can be mandated by others. Other ah um pre-tax sarbanes oxley. Examples on the other set is dahna lorts state law, right? And new york will start mandating certain certain policies there as well. And some off thes policies are very easy to add up. So their templates out there it’s not a huge burden, and i encourage every every organization, if do they do not have a policy out there, just go look for a sample adapted and checked the box yes to show that they’re they’re well, well run and well covered and thiss foot reduced the potential all at risk and it’s also important to use that affection toe basically solicit new board members because one off the users off this maybe perspective what members looking at your nine ninety to see if this is our organs and joe, i want to join this organization, are they so they know what they’re thinking? It might be exposed to any risk by joining terms. All right, we gotta go out for a break. You’re gonna do some more live listener love there’s so much i got to squeeze him in tuscaloosa, alabama welcome live. Listen, i’d love to you. I don’t think you’ve been with us before tuscaloosa welcome and jersey city, new jersey it’s, the birthplace of my my dad. He was born in greenville hospital, jersey city, new jersey, and langley, bilich british columbia. You’re back with us live listener left. All of you. We got some or stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. If you have big dreams in a small budget tune into tony martin. Any non-profit radio ideo. I’m adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s, go abroad with live listener love belgium children, we can’t see your city! I thought that was a pretty open society. They’re belgium, but you’re you’re blocked but welcome live listen love to you, let’s, go to china, where i send ni hao to shanghai, chengdu, korea, multiple listeners in korea, as always, including soul, anya, haserot and japan, multiple listeners tokyo, akashi and others konnichiwa and, of course, podcast pleasantries to those of you listening in the time shift wherever you may be, ninety five hundred of you podcast pleasantries to you yeah, let’s, let’s keep talking about the governance section is that this is not a free form narrative section like the program service accomplishments, it it certain parts ofthe it are free form, for example, one off the question there is, like what’s. Your policy is to review the night ninety so in there you can explain, like how what process off leaving tonight ninety like does every boardmember sees the nine ninety who who looks at it, who prepares its who reviews it and how it gets wild, the other free form part. Is the conflict of interest policy. You can have different types. And who’s who’s monitoring. It goes who’s looking at it. And another part is the determination off the executive compensation. So what’s the policy around that looking at comparables like, do you have independent comity? Looking at it and documenting this decision? There are some some freeform parts over then within governments. Governance? Of course. Right. And we have talked about, i think, all those subjects that you just mentioned with with jean takagi when we’ve spent time on the appropriate governance and oversight. So this is a perfect dovetail. Um, how about you have something about the statement of functional expenses? Where will we find that? If we if we want to go into the nine ninety, um, that would be now little people. Nine off the ninety basically and, um, statement functional expenses. I believe you covered overhead. Mitt in in your previous shows, we have the we had the three signers of the overhead myth. That was on september sixteenth. The ceos of charity navigator, guidestar and better business bureau wise giving alliance. Yeah. So basically, i want to refer to that which is a great point they made and ah, out ofthe not-for-profits are too worried about their program service percentage and that, um, that they want to put like, as they reflect, i guess, everything they can in the program, and they should know that if it’s correct, so but sometimes like it gets to a point where they wanna look at things which is more like gray and, you know, they have the natural incentive to put more into program and not in management, general fund-raising and that doesn’t necessarily reflect the truth and ah, that’s area um, it’s sophisticated donor-centric e-giving and i ninety can tell that certain things are not correct there because certain things such as an audit, it has to be a hundred percent management general, accounting and audit is that, um so i think, it’s another point important here is that that schedule is done correctly so that a potential donor funders looking at it shouldn’t question anything accurate, so get on dh that one is the key. That was the whole message of the overhead myth letter is don’t feel you have to devote everything to to program at the expense of overhead, which can be very very important. Tisbury. So you have sophisticated people looking at your nine ninety, and you’re thinking of it as marketing. Keep that. Keep that in mind. We have to. We have just a couple minutes left. There’s a part of the nine. Ninety that you call a playground? Yes, that is that. That would be schedule. Oh, that’s a place where you can put anything that an organization can beat anything they want in there, so ah, i would use it as a, um what is it called? What is schedule? Oh, called, huh? I think it’s just called a schedule a it’s, like a supplementary information thinkit’s supplementary in formation. And basically, i would encourage organizations toe explain anything that might look unusual on the on the on the nine. Nineteen. Okay, for example, let’s say if they are starting a capital campaign and in that initial year they wouldn’t necessarily have to revenue yet, but they have all these fund-raising expenses. So if they’re fund-raising expense ratio is unusually high and this might be a place to explain that they’re going through the skips, the campaign and that they they’re also informing the public that they’re doing this. So it’s another place toe to use that for that. So outstanding, really interesting perspective on form nine ninety thank you very much. Thank you for my pleasure. You duitz doom senior manager at wagner cpas manager of their new york city office there at wagner cpas dot com next week will mccaskill, author of doing good? Well, no, i’m sorry. Doing well better now doing good, better that’s the book doing good better he’ll be on for the hour if you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go? I did not forget live listen love all the live listeners who are out there can’t name you by city and state were pre recorded today, obviously, but you know the love is going out to live listeners podcast pleasantries, everybody listening in the time shift over ten thousand of you so glad you’re with us and it was very important affiliate affections to our affiliate listeners in stations throughout the country affections out to the affiliate listeners pursuant, find your upgrade prospects with prospector platform you’ll raise boatloads more money, and i’m not talking rowboats or kayaks. Or doory skiffs. We’re talking three masted schooners full of money. Pursuant dot com. Our creative producer was claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez at susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and degree. Buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah, insights or presentation or anything people don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. 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Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony. Martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way, way.

Nonprofit Radio for June 6, 2014: Labor Law & Advocacy And Lobbying

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Tom Wassel: Labor Law

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Attorney Thomas Wassel, partner at Cullen and Dykman, says nonprofits often make mistakes around employee versus independent contractor (it’s not enough to pay them by invoice!) and when bringing in volunteers and interns. We’ll keep you on the right side of the law. df

 

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Gene Takagi: Advocacy And Lobbying

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After last week’s show, is your org allowed to tell the FCC what you think about net neutrality? How far can you go? What’s being done to clearly define what’s allowed around lobbying? Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), has the answers.

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. I want to send personalized podcast pleasantries to ah at lady luck kada on twitter, she listens to us on the f train in new york city. Hello, lady licata. If you tell me where you listen, i’ll shout you out, too. I’m glad you’re with me because i’d be thrown into acquired bronchi act asis if it came within my ken that you’ve missed today’s show labor law attorney thomas wass l, a partner at cullen and dyckman, says non-profits often make mistakes around employees versus independent contractors it’s not enough to pay them buy-in voice and when bringing in volunteers and interns, we’ll keep you on the right side of the law and advocacy and lobbying after last week’s show is your organisation allowed to tell the f c c what you think about net neutrality? How far can you go and what’s being done to clearly define what’s allowed around lobbying? Jean takagi, our monthly legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo, has the answers on tony’s take two i am not objective on net neutrality. We’ll talk about that. We’re sponsored by generosity, siri’s hosting multi charity five k runs and walks, i’ll have more to say about them. I’m very glad that subject of labor law for non-profit springs, tom will sell to the studio. He’s, a partner in the law firm cullen and dyckman in garden city, new york, and in new york city, he’s been advising employers on a wide range of labor and employment law matters since nineteen eighty three he is president elect of the long island, new york chapter of the labor and employment relations association. Thomas l welcome to the studio. Nice to nice to be in your studio, tony. Pleasure to see you here. I’m glad we could do it face to face. So employees versus independent contractor, it turns out, is not enough to just pay somebody buy-in voice. And then, while love they’re they’re an independent contractor. That’s absolutely enough if you want to get into trouble. But it’s not enough if you want to do it right. Okay, basically, whenever one person is performing services for another person or another company, the presumption is that there are an employee and that with everything that that entails, including federal taxes, state taxes, worker’s compensation benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, employee health benefits, things like that in order for them to be classified properly as an independent contract that there’s a number of tests that they need to meet. And if they don’t meet those tests and accompany miss classifies employees big trouble with the department of labor. Okay, we’ll talk about the misclassification ramifications, and so now we’re talking about federal and state, the the where where is this test? This test is from the i r s and then and then well, is that the eleven points is that from the irs? Absolutely. The irs the internal revenue service has an eleven point test, which is used for determining whether or not you have to take out taxes from people’s wages, okay, but every state also has its own version of the test there there pretty similar, but in terms of whether or not you need to contribute for worker’s compensation benefits or unemployment insurance benefits, and they all apply pretty much the same type of test to determine the employee status. Okay, so it sounds like you’re in pretty good shape if you’re following the irs test, which we’re going to talk about, but you still need to enquire at the state level or or you’re not because you’re not a hundred percent safe if you’re doing following just the irs. That’s, that’s absolutely true in other words, each state can have its own rules and merely complying with the federal law that that’s fine in terms of federal taxation. But certain states have have stricter rules with regard to treating people as independent contractors versus employees. So you need to see counsel in the state in which you practice. I practice in new york, so you know, my comments about any law would be limited to anything in new york state and federal law. Okay, we’ll stick with the federal with the caveat that you should check the state level, but you’re on your you’re well, on your way if you’re if you’re complying with the irs regs, i imagine, absolutely. Okay. Okay, so are we these these eleven items? Eyes is basically around the relationship between the employed, the non-profit and the person doing the work. Absolutely the key elements in the test without without trying to go over check checklist abila talk on some of them. Yeah, we’ll get to something it’s a degree of control that thie and i’m going to go. I’m going to use the term employer here, even though we may say it’s a contractual relationship, okay, but no, we’ll say or the employer of the company, the relationship between the company and the person performing the service is in an employment relationship. For example, the company tells the employees where to work, what time to show up what their duties are? Ah, and what do they report to who they’re going to supervise if they’re going to supervise anybody, things like that in a relationship like that that that tends towards the employer employee relationship as opposed to an independent contractor for an independent contractor, you basically say here’s the job, here’s here’s, what i want you to accomplish, maybe some general guidelines do it when you think it’s appropriate, although there may be deadlines set, but i’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’m not going to supervise you on a day to day basis. I’m not going to provide you with the materials to do it. You do it on your own and i’m simply going to pay you a fee, which is another important distinction there the fee basis versus an hourly or salary type basis? Okay, we’ll get to that. You you touched on something that i want to explore a little bit, the place where the work is done. So you you can’t have the person always coming to your office to perform the work now that you can’t have the person doing the work in your office. But it really that would depend on the nature of the work. For example, if if you if you have employees doing the same work and now you’re going to bring in somebody else from the outside to sit alongside your employees and do the same work? Well, that’s an indicator not not it’s, not a single point test, but it’s an indicator of an employer employee relationship. Now, if this person has his or her own business on the outside, has business cards may work from more than one company at the same time or one after another. Oh, and you’re simply hiring that outside company to perform services for a limited period of time? Well, that it tends to lean more towards the independent contractor relationship. How do we balance these eleven? Which we’ll get into some detail about some of the others too? But is it ah, like majority, if you have, if you have six out of the eleven year okay, andi it’s going to go one way or the other based on a majority? Or how does it work? Well, there is no bright line. Testa’s lawyers like to say, i think to some extent you apply the duck test if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck it’s very fact specific and a trier of fact, whether it would be through the department of labor or worker’s compensation board or in a court of law would look at all of these factors and say, well, okay, the control factor tends to lean towards employees, but the independent company factor tends to lean towards independent contractor and way all of these factors together, and then come up with an answer. Okay, so these eleven points are are the things that iris is going to consider? This is what they’re going to look at, and they’re going to put it all together and they’re going to make a decision. Absolutely. Okay? And i guess it would work similarly at the state level. Like when you mentioned department of labor. We’re talking about the state department of labor. Could be state of the state or the united states department of labor. There’s both and and they’re very interested because independent contractors aren’t entitled to overtime or minimum wage or anything like that. You you pay them a fee or you pay them. You pay a company a fee to do something and that’s. Fine. But if their employees and they work more than forty hours in a week, they’re entitled to overtime. Yeah, we may have time to get more into that. Right. Okay. Um, i think we will, actually. What are some of the other side? The other factors in these in these eleven points. But as i mentioned it’s the ah it’s. How people are paid. Yeah. That’s a good one. Sorry, let’s. Talk about that one. The fee versus fee versus salary. Right. Well, typically, an employee may get an hourly wage. May get a weekly salary. It’s generally, the relationship is often not always but often sort of open ended. That is to say, we’re going to hire you not necessarily for a two week barrier or until you finish this job, but we’re going to hire you as an employee and keep you on. But we pay you on a on a paycheck, a supposed to an independent contractor who would normally be paid through some voucher system or through through ah, obviously issuing a ten, ninety nine, which is the tax form for independent contractors and might be in a lump sum. It might be in regular payments, but it’s not based on number of hours worked or anything like that that again, depending on how you structure the deal, that would tend to lean more towards employees or more towards independent contractor. What about? I think you mentioned giving someone the tools to do the work so you shouldn’t be giving them ah, laptop tto do the work or or other things or certainly office space dedicated in the office? I mean, that’s tending to look like employment, right? When you’re giving them that stuff? Absolutely. If i say, come into my place of business and i’m going to give you everything you need to do the job and you don’t have toe put anything on the table. Other than what i give you that’s, the hallmark of an employee, as opposed to an independent contractor who brings their own knowledge, skills and tools to the table and does the job that you’re paying them to do. We’ll go out for a short break, and when we come back, tell marcel and i’m going to keep talking about this, and then we’ll get into volunteers and interns. And then i believe we will have time to for overtime. For employees, you’re supposed be paying your employees overtime. Do you maybe want to turn this off? If you’re listening in the office on monday, only the bosses want to hear this. We’ll get into all that stay with us. You getting anything shooting? Good ending, you’re listening to the talking alternative network e-giving. Nothing. Cubine this’s. The way we’re hosting part of my french new york city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back. French is coming language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it comes desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them. Share this story. Join us, part of my french new york city. Every monday from one to two p, m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Let’s, send some live listener love arco, idaho and orlando, florida live listener love to you very glad you with us let’s, go abroad. Seoul, korea anya haserot, islamabad, pakistan i’m sorry. I don’t know how to greet you in, uh in is it pasha pasha? Pashtun passion is that i’m not sure what, but live listener love to you in islamabad, irrespective of how i would say it in your in your tongue, in your language changing china, always welcoming the chinese lots of listeners. Ni hao, nagoya and tokyo, japan sending you konnichi wa and there are others will get to them kuwait also, i wanted to get to kuwait. Um attorney thomas l let’s see if you’re if you’re the person who’s doing the work, is getting their income from a bunch of different places. Is that that’s that’s? One of the factors, isn’t it that’s, clearly one of the factors, and and that would certainly militate or tend towards a finding of an independent contractor relationship kapin if you hire a company, the company may have its own letterhead may have its own invoices. May have its own business cards may have an ad in the yellow pages for those of us who still actually use paper yellow pages or maybe a gn internet list thing nowadays. So if you hold yourself out as an independent company and maybe even filed company tax returns on have a company workers compensation policy, things like that that again would lean towards the independent contractor relationship rather than employees. If you are ah found by the irs to have misclassified people doing the work, would you expect that the irs is going to report to your state department of labor that that they’ve found ah, misclassification, that’s, that’s a really good question, and i get asked that those kinds of questions a lot from lots of different employers, i tend to represent employers, and my understanding is no, they don’t necessarily do that. That particularly if you settle the case, the words that come to you and say you messed up, you need to pay x amount, and if you settle it voluntarily, they’re not going to go broadcasting it to the world so that there could be more agencies to come and knock on your door. Because that would discourage you from settling in the first place that’s not to say that other agencies won’t find out about it. And certainly if ah, if a case republic if if you would have to go to court, which is a public record and other agencies saw that they could be knocking on your door as well, where do you see employers messing up? Well, it’s again, it’s the any of any of these factors will any or any role these factors? I have clients, and obviously i’m not going to mention names uh, i brought you for, so i did some provocative name dropping, i thought i’d like to keep practising law for a few more. Alright, alright, you’re not retired, they you know, i have i have clients that have they’ll bring people in and they treat them as independent contractors and they say, well, they’re only going to be here for two months. I’m hiring them for a special project and i say yes, hiring see, that was the keyword there on, and it doesn’t matter if you’re hyre it is a temporary employee or a permanent employee that’s one factor, but not not controlling. Temporary employees, their employees, so you have to treat them as contractors, and i’ve had a number of audits fromthe state workers compensation, border unemployment, insurance division come in and say you’re not paying premiums to these people cause you’re not treating them as employees. Pay up. What? What are the penalties let’s talk about the federal level? What would you expect from the irs if ur misclassifying well again? In most cases, if if you own up to the to the mistake, you’ll certainly have to pay what’s owed but safe for the i r s not only will you have to pay what the employers share of the taxes, would it really be? You may also have to pay the employees share of the tactics so security taxes that should have been paid exactly pay both the employer and the employee because the employer messes up, the irs isn’t going to go to the employees and say, by the way, some of that money you got, we want you to give some of it back. It’s, the employer’s responsibility to properly pay the employees. Okay, so the back taxes that were owed, what else? What else might be? Expected? Well, there there could be civil penalties involved to or if it was done knowingly over a long period of time, with no knowing that you were violating the law usually second or third offenders, there could be some more severe penalties involved as well. You’re always welcome teo disagree with young arrests, right on contest there, their belief that you’re misclassifying absolutely, you know, just just cause the irs says so doesn’t make it so. But the presumption is that these people are employees, right, and it’s up to the employer to prove based on the law that these people are actually independent contractors. So if you if you want to fight them, you better have a pretty good case. Let’s move teo volunteers and interns what? What are what are non-profits often getting wrong around these? Well, the good news for not for not-for-profits we call them not-for-profits in new york, but non-profits same, the good news for non-profits is that you’re allowed tohave volunteers in the in the in the in the for-profit sector, you basically can’t have volunteers. Anybody who does work for you has to be paid, but in the in the nonprofit sector you can’t have volunteers, but there are some rules about that as well. The work that’s being volunteered for can’t be the same kind of work that’s otherwise being done. In other words, you can’t have a paid clerical person sitting at a desk and then have somebody else come in and say, well, i’m going to volunteer and i’m going to do the same work sitting side by side the paid pearl really? All right, so let’s, let’s taken example of that suppose closed. You have employees that are preparing mailings. You’ve got a five thousand piece mailing going out and you don’t hyre ah, male house, you’re doing it inside and you’ve got people stuffing in printing, stuffing envelopes, putting stamps on and then you bring some volunteers in to do that same work side by side with employees. That’s that’s, not a volunteer. I’d be very concerned about that. If i was the employer and i if i was their attorney, i would be tell saying we need to take a long, hard look at this because again, people sitting side by side, some people are being paid. Some people are, quote unquote volunteering very dangerous situation. Even if the volunteers volunteered, i mean, even if they walked in and they love the mission, they’ve said, i want to help you. How can i help? And you said, well, we could use ten hours on, you know, over the weekend to put this mailing together well not-for-profits tend to be generally charitable, religious or religious organizations and the servant public purpose and that’s why they’re allowed tohave volunteers to some extent, but to the extent that you’re basically just doing the same work as other employees and saying, i don’t want to get paid for it, the law doesn’t really sanction such things. Oh, my, okay, i got to take a little tension because you mentioned for-profit companies, and i’m interested in that on the intern side. What about all the unpaid internships that are coming right now? It’s, it’s, summertime, what about those? Well, and you read about them all the time in the paper about the irs or the part you read about them in the new york journal? Maybe i don’t not seeing it in the where i’m seeing in popular mohr maur, general press well, you get for-profit are allowed to have interns. But not that you can’t just but but i had on somebody and say, hi, you’re an intern, you’re gonna work for me and you’re not going to get paid. That would be violating the minimum wage laws for, among other things, but somebody can provide an internship if under certain circumstances, if they’re getting some sort of academic credit from an outside institution, if they are getting some sort of actual training from you that’s not specifically tailored to your organisation, but but taylor to their field of study, if they understand from the outset that they’re not going to get paid and that’s an internship also, it has to be a relationship where i understand from the outset otherwise it’s indentured servitude you tell them you’re going to get paid and then they don’t they don’t see a paycheck. That’s ah there’s got okay, that’s clearly got to be rolled. Believe it or not, that’s that’s what i passed that spelled out there, they have to understand that somebody’s done it? Yeah, all right, on and also they’re supposed to actually because they’re an intern and learning from you they’re supposed to be, if, if anything, and impediments. To the business not, ah bonus to the business. In other words, if the business says we’re going to hyre fifty interns to do all sorts of work for us and make money for us that’s not really a bona fide internship, the purpose of the internship, the primary purpose is to give training to the intern, not to make money for the company. And if it’s really a benefit to the company that’s one of the factors that will be looked at to say these air, not truly interns. Okay, thank you for taking little digression in tow. For-profit i love it, you know, you have these answers on top, your head man xero no notes, which i admire, i don’t like i don’t like notes, really? I have notes, but it is just off the top percent wonderful. I’ve been doing it for thirty plus years. I know you start to learn it if that helps. Yeah, yeah. So let’s go back to the non-profit side there are so the general rule is that you can’t have unpaid work as volunteers. But then there are these exceptions that we were starting to get into, right if it’s a bona fide organization, charitable organization and people are truly coming and say, i want to lend a hand to do you were having were having a blood drive or we’re having a special event, and i’m a community member. I’m going to come in and volunteer to give some of my time to help you that’s a true volunteer, but again, if if they’re volunteering simply to do work that the company not-for-profits would otherwise be paying for that’s a problem, employees of the not-for-profits basically can’t volunteer to give away free work. That’s interesting. I wonder if that comes up much. I don’t know. Well, if you see it well, i haven’t seen it, but it’s addressed in a number of decisions or regulations where somebody’s tried it. Yeah, obviously what’s in there? Yeah, right. That’s. Interesting. Okay, if you haven’t, i’d say you have an employee working for not for profit and and and there’s some child care, you’re going to sit with some child kind of thing. Simple. I don’t want to use the term baby sitting because that sounds majority, but some sort of ah monitoring situation, which is not within the normal scope of that. Employees work that might be okay for a volunteer for the employees, but certainly the employees can volunteer to do additional work that employees already getting paid for. And where do you see non-profits making mistakes around the volunteer and in turn, well, i get calls from from some of my not non-profits and so, you know, we’ve got we’ve got all these people are in here and, you know, they’re here for, you know, ten or fifteen hours a week doing all this stuff, and i say, really what’s your first question, what were some? Of course? Well, i say, well, what are they doing? Do you have other people that you’re paying to do the same work? And they’re working side by side are there are these people already employed by you? Because if they are that’s major red flag onda geun, if they’re duplicating or substituting their substituting for paid employees, that’s, that’s a problem? We’ve got somebody who’s out on a totally leave elearning leave a family medical leave act type of leave, so they’re gonna be out for twelve weeks. So we’re gonna have a volunteer fill in for twelve weeks, okay? Do you have? A sound of a klaxon in here or, you know, piela only like that. But that’s just my voice is all we have is scary enough. Thrill enough weak enough as it is. That’s very bad. So paternity leave maternity leave. You can’t have a volunteer filling in you’re basically saying, i’m going to have somebody do the same work as a paid employee, but i’m not going to pay them no lost don’t let you do that. All right? I think that’s very interesting. All right, so what do we do, teo, to remedy this. So when your clients are then calling and there, then finding out in this call that they’re they’re running afoul, what do we do next? Well, i tell them aside, i’m obligated to do as an attorney. You should change this, and you should start treating people correctly going forward because every day that you’re in violation of the labor laws or the or the tax code is ah, is a new problem. If you change things today or tomorrow and start treating people properly, pay them, then you don’t really have a problem. And by the way, all you have to do to comply with most laws is pay minimum wage and you know you don’t. You could have people have clerical people making fifteen dollars an hour. I need somebody to fill in, and i’m just going to pay the minimum wage. You can do that, you just can’t pay him nothing. You can’t have them volunteer if they’re not truly bona fide volunteers, can you work out some alternate form of compensation besides, besides money? Like maybe they get some benefits of services from the organization i get sort of a barter arrangements. What i’m thinking of is that is that possible barter arrangements are legal, but their taxable i don’t represent any barter companies, but i happen to have a close friend who’s involved in a bartering company, and i know that when party a’s trading goods or services with party be, both sides are issued ten, ninety nines and and the company, the bartering company, will report that to the irs. So if you just say instead of paying you seven twenty five an hour, which is the federal minimum wage, it’s hyre in new york state and a lot of other states, but but instead of paying you seven twenty five an hour for forty hours, which is with two, two hundred ninety eight dollars a week. I’m going to give you two hundred ninety dollars worth of free food, that’s that’s a taxable event and frankly, it doesn’t comply with the law. The fair labor standards act, which is the federal law that requires people get paid, requires that you get paid in cash or the equivalent of cash, not in goods and services they’re certain deductions allowed, but not completely excellent. Now we’re talking about federal and state law here, a cz well around the volunteers and interns. Absolutely okay, um, so we’re talking mostly federal, but with the same qualification you need to check about check what the standards are in in your state are you? Are you still pretty well on your way to compliance? If you’re if you’re complying with what the irs requires? Like like we said over on the independent contractor side e, i would say, you know, qualified lee, if that’s a word, if you’re complying with the federal rules, you are more than likely qualita complying with state rules, but i certainly can’t give that as a guarantee without taking a look at the state rules understand, okay, let’s, spend a little a little time. We’re just a couple more minutes on overtime for employees. What is the problem here that you see? Big problem is that certain employees aren’t being paid overtime because employers think they don’t have to. And the biggest fallacy, the biggest myth that i see is and and employers and employees both believed this is that if you’re paid a salary, you don’t get overtime that’s not true, you need to be paid a salary in order to be considered exempt from overtime. But on lee, certain employees performing certain duties are exempt from overtime the main ones. I don’t talk about those one of those executives, administrators or administrative xero and professionals, so if you’re ah not for-profit ifyou’re ah, counselor, a psychologist, psychiatrist, a professional you’re not in your pay and you’re paid on a salary you’re not entitled to overtime, but you may be a highly highly paid administrative person who works closely with management. You may be exempt from overtime, but if you are a lower levels let’s, say a clerical person lower simply on the orc chart, not in terms of your worth, but and you’re you don’t have a lot of discretion and control doesn’t matter if you paid on a salary you’re entitled to overtime. If you work more than forty hours in a work week and that’s not waivable, you can’t agree not to take it. You can’t enter into a contract dipped in blood notarized doesn’t matter. You have to get paid for all hours worked at time and a half and not less than time and a half. Pay attention to the labor law. Thomas l partner in the law firm of cullen c u l l e n and die kayman d y k m a n in garden city, new york and also in new york city. Thomas l thank you very, very much to in my pleasure mine as well. We are sponsored by generosity siri’s you’ve heard me talk about them because they host multi charity five k runs and walks, and the reason for talking to them would be if you are planning such an event as part of your fund-raising mix and another reason would be that i would be grateful because they are sponsoring the show, so if you think about that in your fund-raising, please consider generosity siri’s you can pick up the phone and talk to the ceo dave lynn. They’re at seven one eight five o six, nine triple seven you know they’re on the web as well, of course, generosity, siri’s dot com but i like the phone. They have events coming up in new jersey, miami, atlanta, new york city, philadelphia and toronto. Please check them out generosity, siri’s net neutrality, something i am not at all neutral on amy sample ward and i talked about this last week, and it bothers me that we could end up with two internet one for those internet service providers and people and non-profits who can afford to pay for fast lane service and one with slower service for everybody else. Amy and i talked about the implications of this for the way you do your work day today because so much is in the cloud and also for the people who you’re serving, who may very well need the internet to access your services. You can tell the f c c, the federal communications commission what you think about it at deer fcc dot or ge. Earlier this week, the fcc site crashed. I think that was monday because there were so many comments, but it was back-up very quickly and my video on the subject is at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, sixth of june twenty third show of this year before we bring in jean i want to do a little more live listener love fellmeth, mass, san francisco, california that maybe gene beijing china gun po korea and kyoto, japan. In that order, the how i couldn’t on your haserot and konnichi wa. Now to continue this conversation about how far you can go in advocacy and lobbying we brought in jean takagi you know him he’s, our regular contributor on legal matters. He’s managing attorney of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He and it’s the popular non-profit law blogged dot com which i go too often and he is at gi tak e ta ke on twitter jing takagi, welcome back. Thanks so much, honey, how are you? I’m doing great. Thank you, it’s. Good to talk to you. I always enjoy it on. We want to follow. Up on a conversation that amy sample warden i had last week on about the subject of net neutrality and just how far non-profits can go in in advocacy and lobbying first, let’s distinguish between advocacy and lobbying. Sure, and i think tony there’s, a big difference between advocacy and lobbying and advocacy really embodies lobbying and so much more than lobbying. So i think i’ll start by talking about lobbying in general, which is attempting to influence legislation and legislation is generally in action by some legislative body to make law. So when you’ve got legislation, that’s and we wantto influence that by contacting our legislators that’s lobbying. But if we’re advocating on public policy whether it be on net neutrality in general or we’re talking about, you know, the global warming or fair wages we’re talking about general issues and not specific law, their specific bills in front of a legislative body and all of that stuff non-profit or charitable non-profits khun do without limitation if it’s an advancement of their mission. So i really want to encourage non-profits tio let them know that they can engaged in a tremendous amount of that cassie without looking at the lobbying restrictions and also remind them that actually for most public cherries, the bath majority public charities, they could do a heck of a lot of lobbying as well. Okay, we’re gonna go into sales. No insects, no substantial lobbying. But you could do a lot. Yeah. We’re going to go into details. I know you got some. You have some tests, attorneys. You guys love these tests. It was a test which helps i think they do help. It’s just funny. That is always test. Now. Tony martignetti non-profit radio were a little loose with the word non-profit and i think for our purposes, jean, we need to break down charity versus a non versus the more general non-profit i four years ago, i did not want to call the show tony martignetti charity radio, but i think that for our purposes, i think we need to make that distinction. Can you help me? Yeah. And they’re all sorts of non-profits and charitable non-profits are certainly the most prevalent form of non-profit organizations, but there’s, you know, well, over half a million other types of non-profit organizations out there as well. Um, i’ll use some classification hopefully don’t go. Into jargon jailed for them but five oh one c three riposte to the charitable type organizations and their tax exempt under five a one c three of the internal revenue code. But we’ve got bible onesie for that social welfare organizations that can lobby all they want. And they sort of purse to public interest goals as well. And they include things or organizations like the sierra club, aarp, the n r a greenpeace, and in organizations of of that nature, their advocacy organizations. And they can lobby again all they want. And they can even do some endorsements of political candidates. We’ve got five one five unions, five a onesie, six trade associations, professional associations and chambers of commerce and five on twenty seven social clubs. And they’re probably another thirty two, thirty five categories of tax exempt organizations out there. Somewhere in there is the non-profit cemetery. I think that’s the last one listed. Yeah, under five. Five o one see something. Whatever the last one is, i think it’s i think it’s non-profit cemeteries, they just want to wrap up with the death. I guess so. All right, so all these other non-profits are not charitable. Write the only charitable is five o one c three yet the only one that we refer to as a charitable organization are the five oh one see threes, and those are the ones that are eligible to receive deductible contributions from donors, right? And a lot of the other types of organizations, like the ones you mentioned, sierra club and our etcetera, they will often have five o one c three charitable. I’m going to call them the non legal term arms or so that they can raise money to support charitable that can raise charitable dollars to support there. Bob being an advocacy is that do i have that right? Yeah, kind of. So they have hoexter organizations rather than arms. If i’ll say so, they’re completely separate corporations, but they’re using some sort of relationship between their boards of directors and so there will be affiliate or tandem. Five twenty three charitable organizations with cassie for social welfare advocacy type organizations or c six trade associations happens all the time. Okay. Wanna make that clear? That that that that’s how there, that’s how the money is being raised for the the non five oh one. See three’s. Okay, so there’s a lot that we can do around advocacy because around net neutrality or do you mention global warming? The the economy as long as we’re not? Is it referring to specific legislation in our advocacy? Well, much of our advocacy, if it’s not referring to any specific legislation directly or indirectly, may just be done by charity charities and charitable organizations without limitation and that’s kind of a nice thing, but i mentioned that legislation it is actions by legislative bodies and not administrative agencies, if all you know, add that and the fcc, which is the federal communications commission, is an administrative agency in part of the executive branch of the federal government it’s not part of the legislative branch. So when they make rules and we wantto advocate to change those rules, have them proposed new rules that’s not loving at all that’s advocacy and then that’s why i said that because he could be much, much more broader than lobbying and in the case of net neutrality, which i’m with you on this, i’m not neutral on this issue, and i don’t think most non-profits want to be neutral at all on this issue. As well. I think that advocating on behalf of these proposed rules is really important, right and wide open because it’s not legislation, right? The extent that you think it’s going further your mission, or protect your ability to do your mission to not be relegated to the slow lane or the fcc is putting it there’s a fast lane and a faster lane. And john oliver, in his very highly publicized video that helped crash the fcc servers that you mentioned, um, in his video, just called b s on that i agree with him as well. So if you’re going to be relegated to the slow lane and that’s going to affect your mission, you have every reason to get up and make this comment, which could do very, very easily on that site that you mentioned. Now i’m going to put you in georgian jail for b s jean what exactly did you work? You’re going to say but what exactly is b s jean? I also know that i understand. Go ahead. Okay. That’s. Just plain bullshit. Thank you, jean. I love having fingers. That’s. All right. That’s what i love. Thank you. You’re out of jargon jail instantly. Let’s. Go to the bar. You’re blushing. So safe. Listen, i don’t know where did your mom, your mom, live in orlando, florida? Or arco, idaho? Because if not, then she’s not list. Oh, found with mass. If not, then she’s not listening right now. Okay, then i may be well, there may be others, too. All right. Okay. Let’s, move to the lobbying side where we have these. Have a test for how much lobbying we can do as a five. Oh, one c three charitable organization. Yeah. So there to test on on how to measure lobbying for five, twenty three public charities. And the first test is kind of the default test that you don’t do anything. It’s called the insubstantial part test and it’s a tough one. Because if you look at all the facts and circumstances and the charity’s not allowed to engage in substantial lodging and that’s pretty great. You know what lawyers say is there’s this like old case from the fifties that said about five percent of your budget spent on lobbying was not substantial. So that’s kind of our own only guidance there if you spend five percent of your budget or resource is on lobbying and you fall under this default test. Then you know, you may be breaching the substantial limit if you go about five percent, so for the vast majority of charitable organizations and i’m going to say for any charity that qualified there’s, some that don’t qualify like churches. But granny church charity that qualifies with a budget under let’s say thirty million a year, tony, that embody most of the charities that ninety nine point five percent? I’m sure. Yes, yeah. So any any charity enter a thirty million dollars annual budget should make the fei bo won h election and it’s a half page form from the irs? It’s super easy, its name, address, check a box, and what that does is it makes it so much easier. It’s not all the facts and circumstances it just says you can’t engage in substantial lobbying as measured on ly by your expenditures by the dollars spent so you can rally all your volunteers and spend one hundred percent of your volunteer time lobbying on various issues and again lobbying meaning influencing legislation, actions by legislative bodies you consent all your volunteers to do that without limitation, and it doesn’t even count as any sort of lobbying for your lobbying limit purposes. Of course, their only volunteers if you’re not paying people to do that work a cz well, side by side with these purported volunteers, right? We know that. Yeah, i know that tom was self you were listening to. Tom will sell. I was listeningto the last half of it. Okay, well, i don’t know if you heard them, but to make sure that you’ve got the right volunteers actually fallen. Real volunteers. Okay, not uncompensated. What should have been classified as employees. Exactly. Right. All right. So the five oh, i know i’m usually you qualify things beautifully, but i didn’t mean to forced you into that confession. All right, so this five oh, one h election. I assume. That’s an internal revenue code. Section five. Oh, one h. And what is the simple irs form that you think? Almost all non-profits elle charity should fill out. It’s formed fifty seven. Sixty eight and you could do it any time during the year, even december thirty first, and it would count for that year. So it’s, a really simple form. It doesn’t create additional scrutiny for the organisation it makes measuring lobbying much more easy and the big point i wanted to make it that you’re lobbying limitation under five oh, one age expenditures is twenty percent of your first five hundred thousand dollars in in what will call exempt purpose expenditures our mission related expenditures twenty percent not the five percent that we’ve sort of guided people by under the other tests twenty percent of the first five hundred thousand fifteen of the next five hundred ten of the next up to one million dollars. Kapin and that that’s a pretty generous limit, and this doesn’t count any volunteer time lobbying, and it doesn’t count any of your advocacy efforts around let’s say, net neutrality and commenting to the fcc, which is not lobbying it all right, none of that none of that applies to this what we’re talking about now. That’s, that’s not lobbying. Okay, twenty twenty percent of your first half a million, and then how does it decline after that? The percentage fifteen percent of the next half million, ten percent of the next five percent of the next, and it capped at a million dollars. Told lobbying that’s, a lot of lobbying you could do for a million dollars and the list. You have that where they don’t need to be so scared. Yeah, okay, um, let’s, go out for a break. And when we come back, we’re going to keep talking about about this a little bit. And then we’re going to talk about this the bright lines project, which is intended to help these these gray areas, will stay with me and gene. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. If you have big ideas but an average budget, tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio for ideas you can use. I do. I’m dr. Robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Welcome back. I get a sense of more live listener love. I love it. Decatur, georgia and delhi, india someone’s here suggested i say hello, deli i won’t say who that was. I thinkit’s that’s fun. Okay, it would be indiscreet of me to say who it was. Tom myself, delhi, india live listener love going out to you. I gotta send podcast pleasantries to all our listeners in germany. We got a lot of listeners from the podcast site podcast dot d to all our german podcast listeners couldn’t talk. Okay, jean takagi in san francisco, you have some other things that are like we can talk directly to legislators and and staffs about things and it’s and it’s not considered lobbying. Yeah, if we’re not talking about a specific piece of legislation and we’re talking about issues in general that affect the public that’s that’s not lobbying either. So we wanted to talk to members of congress and said, and open internet is really just an important thing for organizations, and we could get drowned out if we have this to lane highway, maybe we should treat the internet kind of like a public utility. And that might be going a little bit further towards some sort of legislation, but, you know, just in general, if we wanted to talk that way that i would not be lobbing either, so we can put that in the letter we can do an email way can have that conversation anyway. It’s not lobbying, and that includes legislative staff right now, we can talk with legislative staff as well. Sometimes we can’t directly, you know, contact our congress person, but we might be able to get a connection with one of their staff members on dh let them know what their constituents are thinking about this really, really important issues. How about research if we wanted to a research project on an issue? Yeah, you know, if we do it in a nonpartisan matter-ness and we make it available not just to one party or the other one candidate or the other and it’s a full and fair, what we’ll call exposition of the underlying facts has got to be objective doesn’t encourage the recipient to take action, but just informed them of what the issues are and how important it is. Teo address those issues in a reasonable manner that’s going to be fine as well. There is in a project the bright lines project teo to help clear the clear. The muddy waters around lobbying. And they’ve been around for about four years. What can you acquaint us with them more? Sure. They’ve actually been around since two thousand eight and six years. Oh, and just isn’t aside. I’ve been to the hello deli in new york with rupert g had. Sorry. I digress. There. Hello, deli. Where is that? Where? There’s a hello. Deli in new york. Yeah. It’s just around the corner. Rupert g the owners on late night with david letterman regularly and his his delhi is just around the corner from from the letterman theater with the sullivan theater where they do letterman. Okay. All right. That’s, a broadway and fifty six, i think, roughly is the theater is okay. There you go. Thank you. Head. So that’s it. That’s it that’s it. We’re going to wrap it up right there. We’re done valuable public now, more important than the great value for the listening audience. Gino, you know, people are gonna want to have you back next month. Now go ahead. Acquaint us with the bright lines project since two thousand. But i mean the bright line project what it’s done is really to address not just lobbying, but more towards the other types of political activities that organizations charities may engage in, including voter registrations, voter engagement, you know, comparing information amongst candidates in a non partisan manner to educate the voters on those things. Get out the vote drive on things of that nature as well. And the problem right now are that the rules are all kind of facts and circumstances. Rules where the irs looks at everything, but doesn’t provide very much guidance to charities about well, is this okay? Is that okay? Or where do i cross the line? An enforcement of those rules amongst irs agents is also really uneven on dh that’s, you know, partly what may have led to the big. I’ll call it a scandal, if you will, about screening for tea party applications that the tax exemptions that we saw last year. And, you know, with all of this confusion amongst not only the public and organizations but the irs self about howto apply these very, very vague rules, but the bright lines project this thing well, let’s, get some real rules that create some clear, objective standards, so we don’t have to rely on facts and circumstances in what every particular agent or what every particular organization thinks the relevant facts and circumstances are. This is a first amendment issue, isn’t it around speech? Well, it partly and partly deals with that, and it partly comes off of the citizens united case back in two thousand ten, although the bright lines project originated earlier because we had this problem earlier, but yeah, part part of it has to do with free speech and but part of it that just has to do with yes, you you know, the legislator can create laws around what it takes to maintain charitable status and tax exemption under five, twenty three, and we understand that there’s no political intervention allowed the political intervention is used in so many other contexts throughout the internal revenue code as applicable to other tax exempt organizations and for various reasons, including imposing taxes and there’s a different definition every time, and it just is immensely confusing lawyers don’t understand it. The irs doesn’t understand it. The courts don’t understand it, we need some clear rules and all this confusion is just going to lead people to stifle their own opinion. Yeah, leads what happens is the small guy on the small organization stifle their opinions because they’ve got to be conservative and protective of being able to advance their missions, the big guys, the big lobbying organizations or the dark money. So where donors can hide themselves by using five a onesie for five, twenty six organisations to shield that they’re supporting a particular candidates can hide themselves in this andi and use the law to their benefit. So we want to make sure that everything is transparent and open out there on dh that’s part of the reason we have the bright lines project as well. I’m not part of that group, but i’m definitely a supporter now. I arrest has made some efforts teo, to improve the rules, right? Yeah, the the irs has has taken a first shot at this on dh. You know, there were sixty nine thousand comments within, like, a couple of weeks after the fcc regulations for a proposed rule making on the net the trial of the issue, they’re over one hundred fifty. Thousand comments on when the iraq proposed new rules about political activities and five a onesie for social welfare organizations. I mentioned those before, like the sierra club, aarp and are a bacon engage in unlimited lobbying, but they do it for a public or social welfare purpose. Andi can engage in some election hearing as long as that’s not their primary activity, and some of them push it all the way up to forty nine percent of their budget being spent on election nearing, you know, getting candidates elected, and so the i r s is trying to improve things for us. They’re trying to yeah, they’re trying to figure out what the rules bar, but again they’re using different rules for five a one c four’s and five a onesie threes, and then it just muddies the water of well, you’re using similar terms, but they have different meanings. How do we interpret all of this? And if we create a big shield just that applies to five one fourth, the dark money will move the bible onesie, sixes or other other types of tax exempt organizations, so it doesn’t really plugged the hole very well and it doesn’t allow for things like non partisan election related activities that five one six weeks have been allowed to do for years and years and years without a problem. So it it muddies the waters greatly and that’s why the irs is actually rewriting the rules in total, and they’ve decided not to have any hearings based on their old rules because with one hundred fifty thousand comments, you can see that there was some distaste of what they first came out with. And i get the good process gene just very quickly. Where will we find the bright lines project? I think it’s a bright lines project dot org’s on bits that at citizen dot org’s is the host of the organization citizen dot org’s. Yeah, that’s public citizen’s website. Okay, we have to leave it there. Jim takagi, our monthly contributor on the law managing attorney of neo. You’ll find hizb blawg at non-profit law block dot com and you’ll find him on twitter at g tech. Thank you very, very much, gene. Thanks. Have a great day. My pleasure. Thank you. Next week i’ll have something from ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference and maria simple is back to talk about the right to be forgotten and its implications for your prospect research. If you missed any part of today’s show, you’ll find it on tony martignetti dot com. Remember that we are sponsored by generosity, siri’s, generosity, siri’s, dot com, our creative producer, declare meyerhoff sam lever, which is our line producer, shows social media, is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing. Remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of new rules of an independent contractor. Our music is by scott stein from brooklyn. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. You don’t know anything, including getting victims. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Get in. Nothing. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. 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Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s, monte, m o nt y monty taylor. Dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking dot com.