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> This may not be a matter of Upwork wanting to upsell the client > Thus: the ultimate villains here are the tax/employment-regulation authorities. Why be so

by alxlaz 8y ago

> This may not be a matter of Upwork wanting to upsell the client > Thus: the ultimate villains here are the tax/employment-regulation authorities. Why be so quick to think that this may not have been Upwork's fault, but the ultimate villains definitely are the tax/employment-regulation authorities? If there is a regulatory issue at stake, the correct thing to do is to disclose it quickly and transparently. Upwork (and other freelancing websites) have no communication problem when it comes to telling you that you need to pay them some new fee, or when it comes to allegedly violating their terms and conditions. But when there's a regulatory problem, it's "just" a problem of communication? Hard to believe.

jey 8y ago
It's pretty clear from their wording if you are already familiar with these issues. This tax classification thing of "contractor" vs "employee" is a standard bugaboo lurking in these waters, and Upwork is doing a terrible job of articulating it and dealing with it.
- scoggs 8y ago
  Their silence comes off at best as "saving their own asses" and at worst as "saving our own asses while doing as little work as possible to retain clients and customers". Neither make for a feel good story.
TomMarius 8y ago
Because governments are well known to do this and everything about this sounds just like many other cases.
- alxlaz 8y ago
  Upwork, Freelancer.com & friends are equally well-known to do this.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    To do what? These companies have zero interest in this tax-related issue. It's a burden to them, actually.
stanleydrew 8y ago
Doesn't seem hard to believe that this doesn't happen very frequently and that whatever customer support person happened to respond to the freelancer's ticket went into the internal knowledgebase and just lazily typed up something regarding "compliance."
- alxlaz 8y ago
  Have you ever worked with this sort of platforms? Because this is pretty much all in a day's work there. Things have slowly degraded from back in the days of the first freelancing platforms (e.g. Rent-A-Coder) to a state where it's nothing short of a disaster. Virtually every freelancer or contractor I know uses these platforms when they're starting out in order to develop a basic network of contacts and a steady (if very badly-paid) stream of contracts to build on. But as soon as you can avoid these platforms, you do. And not because of the fees, which aren't that high, but because of the disastrous support (like in this instance) and lack of protection against scamming.

by alxlaz 8y ago

jey 8y ago

It's pretty clear from their wording if you are already familiar with these issues. This tax classification thing of "contractor" vs "employee" is a standard bugaboo lurking in these waters, and Upwork is doing a terrible job of articulating it and dealing with it.

scoggs 8y ago
Their silence comes off at best as "saving their own asses" and at worst as "saving our own asses while doing as little work as possible to retain clients and customers". Neither make for a feel good story.

TomMarius 8y ago

Because governments are well known to do this and everything about this sounds just like many other cases.

alxlaz 8y ago
Upwork, Freelancer.com & friends are equally well-known to do this.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  To do what? These companies have zero interest in this tax-related issue. It's a burden to them, actually.

stanleydrew 8y ago

Doesn't seem hard to believe that this doesn't happen very frequently and that whatever customer support person happened to respond to the freelancer's ticket went into the internal knowledgebase and just lazily typed up something regarding "compliance."

alxlaz 8y ago
Have you ever worked with this sort of platforms? Because this is pretty much all in a day's work there. Things have slowly degraded from back in the days of the first freelancing platforms (e.g. Rent-A-Coder) to a state where it's nothing short of a disaster. Virtually every freelancer or contractor I know uses these platforms when they're starting out in order to develop a basic network of contacts and a steady (if very badly-paid) stream of contracts to build on. But as soon as you can avoid these platforms, you do. And not because of the fees, which aren't that high, but because of the disastrous support (like in this instance) and lack of protection against scamming.