One of the factors in my thoughts is the restaurant could easily be shut down. The IRS does not play. They can repo everything you have and it will take you years and a fortune in lawyers' fees to win, i if you can. I am not out to get any innocent victims, about whom I know little.

What I would really like to see happen in this amorphous moral world (channeling Graham Greene) is a scene I actually dreamed last night. In the dream Allie and I went to see him and I said if you give her the $329 you stole from her,this is over, over and done. He could probably pull it out of his wallet or his bankroll in a front pocket. No requests for more, no threats, no blackmail, no nothing. Pay her what she's due and we're all done here. Like most vivid dreams, it ended without a resolution.

>A restaurant paying staff as contract work is totally illegal. I would be tempted to turn them in but the penalties and interest would probably shut the restaurant down. There is very specific rules to allow a company to pay someone as contract labor. One of the rules is there are no set times or a number of hours to work. I am sure your daughter had a set work schedule.
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>>Yesterday I drove my older daughter back to UW-Milwaukee after she spent the weekend here. One of the items on the short to-do list was to get her W-2 statement so I could file her taxes. It's no big deal, I thought, about 15 or 20 minutes in TurboTax. Fill in the her personal info and the W-2 data, she owes nothing, off it goes into the mail. That's exactly the way it was for Emily, which had to be done earlier as part of her college application paperwork. (She is going to Madison, BTW, which was her first choice).
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>>Whoops. Not quite so simple. The tax form Allie was given by her employer, a local Mexican restaurant, was not a W-2 but a 1099-MISC. He personally runs the place that bears his name and does as much as possible under the table. She got nothing at all from him for 2009 Income stated this year, box 7 on the 1099-MISC, 'nonemployee compensation,' means no withholding for taxes, Social Security, or Medicare. At first I thought, eh, no big deal, she just loses some amount of social benefits which will probably be worthless by the time she retires anyway. Not worth fighting over when the income is around $3400 for the year.
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>>Then I went through the TurboTax interview for her return and discovered there is a significant difference. 1099 income is taxed in brackets, with no income tax-free no matter how little you make. Ordinary income, which is in fact what she made as a waitress in her only job of the year, goes to zero under some number way over $3400. The 1099-MISC is for independent businesspeople like me and many of you who are paid for our services and then are expected to pay taxes. Entrepreneurs. And that is entirely correct. But a young waitress who works at one place and is an employee by any reasonable definition? That is a misrepresentation.
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>>After the standard deduction, TurboTax said she owes the IRS $231 and the state of Illinois $98. That's quite a difference for a 21 year old college student who is perpetually broke Yesterday when I dropped her off I gave her $20 for tampons and paper towels in the suitemate rotation. $329, heck yeah, that's serious money when you're that age. And the tax due is because her ******* boss is so cheap he offloads the insignificant impact on him of doing it by the rules to stick it to those who have little. That's the part that ignites the little red in my brain.
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>>When I realized how her taxes had come out I called her, then we talked twice after that. I said for now let's just file the returns with no checks attached and leave it for later. She has a highly lucrative summer job lined up and then if push comes to shove she will be able to easily afford the taxes due. She also has at least one more lucrative night coming up at this restaurant. They have a band come in -- unlicensed, of course, he tells the staff that if anyone calls asking about the band they should just hang up -- and Allie makes around $100 in tips those nights. That is a nice offset to the many nights last summer when Allie was the only greeter and waitress and frequently had only one or two tables from 4:30 to close.
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>>Just me? I would stick an M-80 up him and light the fuse. I know I need to turn the emotions off again and let her handle it, just give her advice and let her take the lead. Which I will. It still p****s me off. I told her she should maybe consider, after she has earned as much money from his fine example of small business America as she expects to, diming him. She is surely not the only one he has exploited in the same way. The other reason for holding back is the law of unintended consequences. The cook (paid in cash) who she likes a lot, the other employees who she also likes, It's up to her and I suspect she will just let it go. Oh boy, though, this guy deserves to be blown up.
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>>Not only is he taking money out of the pockets of his employees, he doesn't even pay them minimum wage. The min in Illinois is $4.25/hour. Allie started at $3.00/hour and got a "raise" last summer to $3.50. That's illegal. Filing fraudulent documents to the IRS, the IL Dept. of Revenue, and ignoring the Social Security Administration are not only illegal but highly combustible. Only a fool messes with the IRS.
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>>This little vignette illustrates my distrust of those up on the pedestal promoting "fiscal reform." Paul Ryan, who hails from fairly nearby Janesville, WI, is the biggest weasel of them all. Scott Walker is the poster boy for blaming it all on teachers and unions in general and taking a paddle to them. This from the state of Bob LaFollette. It's like a viral disease.
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>>Funny how when it comes down to it the needy are transferring wealth to the far from needy. Let's eviscerate the governmental safety net and give most of it to the rich. It will trickle down! (It never has yet). There is so much talk about small business being the engine of our economy. IMO many of them are more accurately described as Robin Hoods in reverse. And also technically, legally, crooks like ****.