4 ms·

Is it possible to pay someone in the US without getting their SSN/EIN? In other words, is there a way to do this without any major strings attached in either d

by jcims 5y ago

Is it possible to pay someone in the US without getting their SSN/EIN? In other words, is there a way to do this without any major strings attached in either direction? I think that's the impediment for most orgs. By the time you've gotten to the interview process most companies have invested thousands of dollars per candidate in the process, adding on a $500-1k cash outlay per short-lister would be a rounding error. Also, giving someone an actual backlog item would turn off most companies, but building a representative task where you vet performance against your current staff seems to be reasonable.

outside1234 5y ago
No - the company would need to file a 1099 (assuming it was structured as a contract gig)
- irf1 5y ago
  Algora takes care of 1099s (via Stripe) so you don't have to
dvtrn 5y ago
The IRS has joined the chat
sly010 5y ago
As a company, you don't have to report payments to a freelancer under $600 [0] [0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/reporting-payments-to-independent-contractors https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... edit: added source
- fridif 5y ago
  However the IRS states all income above $10 "must" be reported by the recipient.
  - whofw 5y ago
    You can self report that via other means, you don’t necessarily have to receive a 1099
    - fridif 5y ago
      Agreed, just saying that it wouldn't be tax free income.
fridif 5y ago
De jure, no. De facto, VISA gift cards.
- jcims 5y ago
  That doesn't scale though. We hired 150 people in one engineering org over the past two years. Assuming we picked from a pool of 500 that'd be quarter to half million in gift cards. Edit: because my point seemingly isn't clear. It's not about the money, its the fact that you can't hide a quarter of a million dollars in gift cards from the IRS. So for this process to scale, it has to be completely legal and above board.
  - throwaway13337 5y ago
    It sounds like if that's the model, you're externalizing your costs to those unfortunate 500 people's time. That's pretty unethical. Maybe don't waste so many people's time if you're very unlikely to hire them? Those I interview, I ask to complete a small task that I pay for. It's the only way I can do it and feel okay about rejecting them if I choose to. It feels pretty bad to work on something, get rejected, and have no compensation for your time and effort.
    - jcims 5y ago
      In this situation, the hypothetical 500 were on the short list from tens of thousands of applications and some intermediate number of first round interviews. This was the 'short list' and we could have likely hired any one of them successfully. We didn't do the 'hand them a project for a day' btw, we met them in person and had them go through a half day of panel interviews. Still something that ideally they would have been compensated for beyond food and our gratitude. I'm on the side of paying candidates that go through any substantial interview effort, I just think that the regulatory details are going to select for folks that are less privacy-focused and are already established in the domestic economic infrastructure. I used to work in a bug bounty program where we paid out to researchers all over the world and the logistics of it was a pretty major issue (and resulted in a non-negligible portion of the submitters forfeiting their payment).
auslegung 5y ago
Yes
irf1 5y ago
Stripe Connect collects SSN/EIN for someone to get paid on Algora. It's basically no-strings-attached contract work within Git repositories.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kapilkale 5y ago
My company, tremendous.com, does this, including the tax form collection process if spend exceeds $600 / person. Our primary use case is user research incentives, but interview incentives is an analogous problem. Basically no strings attached for both sides. We do complete a compliance review for businesses signing up for our site (given we're a payments company), but it's basically invisible at smaller volumes.
- jcims 5y ago
  I would say it's more strings attached than handing a wad of cash to someone. A service aggregator like this certainly would reduce the headache for the hiring company but for the person being interviewed they still have to 'play ball' by entrusting some commercial entity with private information, no?
  - kapilkale 5y ago
    Kinda- for a $300 reward, for example, we only need an email address. So a recipient could just choose an Amazon.com gift card and apply it to their account, with only an email address provided.

by jcims 5y ago

outside1234 5y ago

No - the company would need to file a 1099 (assuming it was structured as a contract gig)

irf1 5y ago
Algora takes care of 1099s (via Stripe) so you don't have to

dvtrn 5y ago

The IRS has joined the chat

sly010 5y ago

As a company, you don't have to report payments to a freelancer under $600 [0] [0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/reporting-payments-to-independent-contractors https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... edit: added source

fridif 5y ago
However the IRS states all income above $10 "must" be reported by the recipient.
- whofw 5y ago
  You can self report that via other means, you don’t necessarily have to receive a 1099
  - fridif 5y ago
    Agreed, just saying that it wouldn't be tax free income.

fridif 5y ago

De jure, no. De facto, VISA gift cards.

jcims 5y ago
That doesn't scale though. We hired 150 people in one engineering org over the past two years. Assuming we picked from a pool of 500 that'd be quarter to half million in gift cards. Edit: because my point seemingly isn't clear. It's not about the money, its the fact that you can't hide a quarter of a million dollars in gift cards from the IRS. So for this process to scale, it has to be completely legal and above board.
- throwaway13337 5y ago
  It sounds like if that's the model, you're externalizing your costs to those unfortunate 500 people's time. That's pretty unethical. Maybe don't waste so many people's time if you're very unlikely to hire them? Those I interview, I ask to complete a small task that I pay for. It's the only way I can do it and feel okay about rejecting them if I choose to. It feels pretty bad to work on something, get rejected, and have no compensation for your time and effort.
  - jcims 5y ago
    In this situation, the hypothetical 500 were on the short list from tens of thousands of applications and some intermediate number of first round interviews. This was the 'short list' and we could have likely hired any one of them successfully. We didn't do the 'hand them a project for a day' btw, we met them in person and had them go through a half day of panel interviews. Still something that ideally they would have been compensated for beyond food and our gratitude. I'm on the side of paying candidates that go through any substantial interview effort, I just think that the regulatory details are going to select for folks that are less privacy-focused and are already established in the domestic economic infrastructure. I used to work in a bug bounty program where we paid out to researchers all over the world and the logistics of it was a pretty major issue (and resulted in a non-negligible portion of the submitters forfeiting their payment).

auslegung 5y ago

Yes

irf1 5y ago

Stripe Connect collects SSN/EIN for someone to get paid on Algora. It's basically no-strings-attached contract work within Git repositories.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kapilkale 5y ago

My company, tremendous.com, does this, including the tax form collection process if spend exceeds $600 / person. Our primary use case is user research incentives, but interview incentives is an analogous problem. Basically no strings attached for both sides. We do complete a compliance review for businesses signing up for our site (given we're a payments company), but it's basically invisible at smaller volumes.

jcims 5y ago
I would say it's more strings attached than handing a wad of cash to someone. A service aggregator like this certainly would reduce the headache for the hiring company but for the person being interviewed they still have to 'play ball' by entrusting some commercial entity with private information, no?
- kapilkale 5y ago
  Kinda- for a $300 reward, for example, we only need an email address. So a recipient could just choose an Amazon.com gift card and apply it to their account, with only an email address provided.