The ATO’s online decision tool helps classify whether extra staff hired for the busy holiday period are employees or contractors.
Are you hiring extra staff over the busy holiday period? You need to make sure you know whether they’re on your books as employees or contractors.
You may only need workers for a few days or weeks, but it’s important you’re clear on the working arrangement, for both tax and super purposes. Just because someone has an ABN doesn’t automatically make them a contractor. They could be deemed an employee even if you only use them for:
- casual, temporary, on-call and infrequent work
- short-term, busy periods
- small jobs, specific tasks or individual projects
To help you categorise new members of your team when you’re hiring extra staff, use the ATO’s employee/contractor decision tool. Based on your answers to some simple questions, it’ll produce a report that tells you whether each worker will be classified as an employee or contractor for tax and super purposes.
Employers hiring extra staff who have used the tool say it provides certainty that they’re classifying staff correctly, and they particularly like the fact they can file away a copy of the report results for their records.
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