Episode 44: The New California AB5 Law and What it Means for Independent Contractors

If you're a business owner and live in California you've probably heard of a new law which sets out rules for business owners who use independent contractors. With all new laws, and especially with this one, there's usually some confusion so join The Legal Paige as she sits down with San Diego based attorney, Braden Drake, to chat all about the new law that went into effect January 1, 2020.

Some things we talked about:

• Braden's background and some of his favorite things

• What is AB5 and what does it mean for business owner's in California?

• We breakdown ALL the important parts of AB5 into non legal terms

Here are a few quotes:

• (6:42) “In that case, they basically created a whole new rule, specifically for one subset of employment law that would redetermined how someone would be classified as an employee or a contractor."
• (7:07) "This new law codified it and also extended the ABC test from that court case into essentially all areas of employment law within the State of California."
• (9:26) "People are confused because frankly, it's just very confusing. This is not an uncomplicated issue. There's a lot of caveats, exceptions, and it also is creating very drastic changes."
• (11:44) "So where people get into trouble is when you hire someone as a second shooter and they're not a photographer and you have to train them, that looks a lot more like an employee."
• (13:48) "So free from control, B, they have to perform work outside of the usual course of what YOU do as a business owner, which is obviously the biggie here, and then C they have to primarily be doing that type of business that they're helping you with."
• (17:25) "The most important exceptions, for most of our audiences, will be exception E, the "business-to-business" contracting relationship, which will allow you to fall under the old test for independent contractors but you HAVE to also meet very specific conditions."
• (26:25) "So you solely just need to be contracted with the business, and of course here, paid by the photography business."

Links mentioned:

• The Legal Paige Shop
• Find more from Braden Here
• Follow Braden Here