As always the govt wants to protect you from corporations by forcing you to be dependent on them for your livelihood. A bit different situation, but relevant t

As always the govt wants to protect you from corporations by forcing you to be dependent on them for your livelihood. A bit different situation, but relevant to the group here. In the US, software contracting started to become very big during an earlier tech bubble. This was crushed in the mid 80s by a new tax law that made a long list of requirements (12 or something) that must be satisfied to work as a contractor in tech. You practically had to operate as an independent company selling them a finished product. Otherwise they would fine both sides and make the company you contracted with pay back taxes. The law was so overreaching it had to exempt other professions like housekeeping and legal services which were "traditionally" operating via hourly billing or whatever, or those forms of operating would be completely eliminated too. The govt figured they would get more tax money with people paying through paycheck deductions, while businesses such as IBM were pushing for the law to turn the competition into employees.