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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

> Startup not paying wages or tax on employees, to claim unemployment benefit I have to report them.

They could be considering you as a contractor. Research the difference between contractor and employee. Depends on your working relationship with them.

EDIT: You can only be a contractor if they are actually paying you. If you are getting no money, not sure what that means.

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> You can only be a contractor if they are actually paying you.

You can be a contractor if they've agreed to a legally-valid contract (which requires some kind of obligation of consideration, whether payment in money or something else), but they could fail to perform that obligation and you could still be a contractor (just as you could still be an employee if the company failed to pay wages), they'd just be in breach of their duty under the contract (whether its an employment contract or otherwise.)

A lot hangs on this distinction in the law, but the guidelines for determining seem to strongly favour and employee interpretation. Definitely lawyer territory though.

Being a CTO and being a contractor seem like mutually exclusive conditions, at least where I'm from (California). It's not B&W entirely, but it's far more likely than not (at least here) that you should be an employee with that title.

>EDIT: You can only be a contractor if they are actually paying you. If you are getting no money, not sure what that means.

Breach of contract?

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