Department of Labor Goes After Independent Contractors

As longtime readers know, I’ve been talking about the possibility of the 1099 exemption for real estate agents going away for quite a few years now. I first wrote about it in 2014, after raising the issue of real estate agents getting classified as employees at the 2013 T3 Summit, then again in 2015 in looking at Monell v. Boston Pads.

Without question, one of the biggest events on this topic was when California passed AB5 putting a new framework for analyzing whether someone was an employee or an independent contractor into place. That framework, the so-called “ABC test” came from a case called Dynamex. I wrote about that case in detail here. But because of the lobbying power of California Association of REALTORS, the law had a carve-out for real estate agents, ensuring that agents in California would not be subject to the ABC test.