If you pay someone for a job service etc they are employed by you.
An employee and contractor are mutually exclusive. As a matter of law (civil, common, and business), if someone is an employee, they are by definition NOT a contractor. If someone is a contractor, they are by definition NOT an employee.
An employee may be defined as: "A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed." Black's Law Dictionary page 471 (5th ed. 1979).
Here you go, read and learn:
Employee v. Independent Contractor -- What is the difference?
Essentially, employees are subject to the supervision of the employer concerning how the job is accomplished. The employer is a boss. Independent contractors, on the other hand, do not need to be supervised about how the job should be done. They are simply responsible for the ultimate outcome of the job. The person that hires an independent contractor is not a boss, but a customer of the independent contractor.
An important difference is that
employers are not automatically liable for the legal wrongs committed by independent contractors, but are legally responsible for the acts or omissions of employees when they are acting within the scope of their employment.
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IRS Publication 1779 - Independent Contractors vs. Employees
The courts have considered many facts in deciding whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee. These relevant facts fall into three main categories: behavioral control; financial control; and relationship of the parties.
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Employee Or Independent Contractor?
A. Liabilities and Benefits
Although once again the applicable law may change from state to state,
it is generally the case that an employer may be "vicariously" liable for the negligence of an employee, but
will not be liable for the acts of an independent contractor.
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Who is an independent contractor?
If the one who pays for the labor and services of another has the right to control what will be done and how it will be done, this other person is an employee. This will be so even though the employee has been given some degree of freedom of action. The key determinant is the existence of the right to control the details of how any work is done. Whether such control is actually exercised is irrelevant.
If the one paying for the work does not have the right to control the day-to-day working but merely to direct the desired result, the person supplying the labour is an independent contractor.
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Main Entry: em·ploy·ee
: a person usually below the executive level who is hired by another to perform a service esp. for wages or salary and is under the other's control ?compare INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR
What are you saying? That you have no control over what your employees do in your business. That I find truely amazing!
No employer has complete control at all times over what their employees do. Employees are human beings, who think and act for themselves, and need not be hovered over every second of every minute to tell them how to do their job. If an employee screws up, that is not reasonably or generally under my control nor is my fault, but I am liable for their screw-ups. Which brings us to your next lesson:
Yes I do know something. I do know that you by definition are wrong in all respects. By the way you don't have to be insulting to try and make your point.
The difference between fault (i.e. culpability) and liability, or liability without fault:
Strict Liability (Liability without fault)
Strict liability, sometimes called absolute liability, is the legal responsibility for damages, or injury,
even if the person found strictly liable was not at fault or negligent. Strict liability has been applied to certain activities in tort, such as holding an employer absolutely liable for the torts of her employees...
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Vicarious Liability
Employers are vicariously liable, under the respondeat superior doctrine, for negligent acts or omissions by their employees in the course of employment. For an act to be considered within the course of employment it must either be authorised or be so connected with an authorised act that it can be considered a mode, though an improper mode, of performing it...
However, the employer of an independent contractor is not held vicariously liable for the tortious acts of the contractor, except where the contractor injures someone to whom the employer owes a non-delegable duty of care, such as where the employer is a school authority and the injured party a pupil.
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Vicarious liability (Strict Liability)
Vicarious liability is liability imposed on the master of a servant for the tort of that servant when committed in the course of his employment. This is a form of strict liability since
the ?innocent? master is made liable for the fault of his servant."
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Independent Contractor
The employer of an independent contractor is generally not held vicariously liable for the tortious acts and omissions of the contractor, because the control and supervision found in an employer-employee or Principal-Agent relationship is lacking.
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Best Buy contracts a third-party company to service/repair laptops under warranty. The employees of that contracted company are neither under Best Buy's control nor does Best Buy control the material manner in which their jobs are performed. Ergo, Best Buy isn't responsible or at fault for what the employees of another company do, but Best Buy is liable for the outcome.
You getting it now, or need I school you some more in the law?