I’ve worked with people doing this in the past and they almost certainly are contractors in name only. That is they are essentially full time employees operating as contractors to skirt legal issues.
A remote worker can be an independent contractor and easily not run afoul of employee/contractor distinctions, especially because a lot of those distinctions have to do with being at a certain place at a certain time, and being locked to one client.
Here’s one of the tests. Notice vacation is explicitly called out.
> Are there written contracts or employee type benefits (i.e. pension plan, insurance, vacation). Will the relationship continue and is the work performed a key aspect of the business?
Your employer is clearly treating you like an employee while paying you like a contractor. This kind of thing is common. But the more US jobs get outsourced like this, the more likely it is that people will notice and demand enforcement actions.
And how or who would enforce this for me, who is an Estonian citizen, Argentinian resident, and operates from under a USA based LLC as a non-resident USA company owner, working mostly for European start-ups? Which country would do the enforcing in this case?
Companies already report how much they pay contractors to the IRS and state tax agencies, so spot checking companies paying a large percentage of their total wages to contractors is the easiest way to do it.
If you’re being paid by any American companies, the most likely theoretical enforcement would be the state the company is based in.
For an example see the response by the OP below.
The remote worker is treated like an employee except for how they are paid.
Few of the distinctions have to do with being in a certain place at a certain time. It’s more about controlling how they work. And in most the examples I’ve seen, remote workers are expected to be available during a certain set of hours, they must do the work in very specific way, they are forbidden from subcontracting, they are provided tools, the work is expected to continue long term, and the level of control generally prohibits them from working for multiple clients at a time.
It’s common for businesses to ignore these guidelines, but the more common it gets for companies to outsource work this way, the more news stories you’ll see and the more likely enforcement will happen.