Much irrelevant hand-waving. Legal issues are always somewhat 'fuzzy' and subject to judgement -- it's why we have judges. And this is not that fuzzy, the IRS

Much irrelevant hand-waving. Legal issues are always somewhat 'fuzzy' and subject to judgement -- it's why we have judges. And this is not that fuzzy, the IRS has published clear standards for decades and it's well litigated. Nothing about that prevents a company from defining the boundaries of it's behavior and communicating clearly & behaving ethically. Timing is utterly irrelevant here. The ONLY reason he found out is that he had the good luck to have a well-placed friend who could see the issue AND had a communication side-channel. Absent that luck, he'd be permanently screwed. We've got no data on what other customers were able to buy or not, and it is also irrelevant -- particularly for a contractor primarily occupied with a single buyer, who would not have tuned his marketing to the broader market, and due to Upwork's unethical behavior would have no notice that he needed to. "...in a teapot"? BS! A scaled business like this is a large system, and this is an example of how the system works, and limits the range of possible root causes. In Upwork's case, it is either one of two things. 1) A sloppy mess of incompetence and make-it-up-as-you-go-along supported by ill-invested venture funds. Or, 2) A management that has specifically decided to implement a system of unethical behaviors in hopes of extracting higher profits regardless of the cost to it's users. Either way, they are either unqualified to be in biz, or unqualified for anyone to do biz with. I'm left wondering why you are such an eager and persistent apologist for this behavior, grasping any straw to excuse it . . .