Is this Involuntary Servitude?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In the mail today I received an order from a court, demanding that I fill out numerous forms supplying information about an employee, her wages, benefits, etc. They want copies of her W-2s, which as far as I know I supplied to the employee via my accountant. The letter enclosed gave me a time limit to do this, otherwise I will be subpoenaed to explain why I haven’t done the assignment.

So, I’m not good at this part of business stuff. Previously I employed a business manager who did stuff like this. She retired and now I do this kind of stuff. Some of the questions I do not know. My accountant probably knows all the answers, but I assume she’d charge me for doing this and no way am I going to pay.

I spent an hour filling in what I could, left a bunch of things blank or marked “don’t know”.

An hour of my time has a certain value, yet there was no mention of me being paid. Is this involuntary servitude? I thought that was illegal, dammit.

2

I am not a lawyer or an accountant or anything like that, so I can’t speak to your particular situation. But, just from your description, it doesn’t sound too much different from how the Gummint makes all American taxpayers do their taxes every year, or pay someone else to do them for us, which apparently isn’t considered illegal involuntary servitude.

3

For the IRS the option exists to just file a simple return, right? Send your W2 and ask them to compute your tax?

4

I would think this is part of the deal when you choose to charter a corporation or choose to have employees. Thus not involuntary. Usually the court will give you a reason if they want you to produce a document, such as “the Department of Families is processing an application for your employee and we need your documents”.

~Max

5

The Draft was involuntary servitude, but they got away with it for a long, long time.

6

I received a request from the VA today as part of an employment verification for a new hire where U had to explain why they were qualified for the job I hired them for. I get that my employee needs this to buy a house but I came really close to telling them to fuck off.

I agree though I hate this part of running a business between this and setting up paperwork with two new states today was worthless and frustrating.

7

Just to be perfectly clear, “the Draft” was never found to be involuntary servitude, so there was no “got away with it for a long, long time”.

“Compelled military service is neither repugnant to a free government nor in conflict with the constitutional guaranties of individual liberty. Indeed, it may not be doubted that the very conception of a just government and its duty to the citizen includes the duty of the citizen to render military service in case of need, and the right of the government to compel it.” Selective Draft Law cases.

8

“Honestly, their dreamy blue eyes were just too much for me”.

Man, I’m steaming over this. I wish now I had just sent a note to the court, letting them know I have stacks of boxes full of paperwork and they’re welcome to stop by and look through them to see if they can find the information they want.

9

I don’t feel you’re going to have any luck persuading a judge that complying with a court order is an illegal act of involuntary servitude. The decision would almost certainly be that the court order was deemed reasonable at a due process hearing.

10

Without actual details as to what you’re filling out it’s hard to really say what you obligations are. As a business owner who has employed a good number of people over the years I’ve never received an actual court order asking me to fill out information about an employee. I’ve certainly had to process a lot of employee information stuff for government entities though (child support, tax etc.). If the letter says you will be hit with a subpoena if you don’t comply, then likely the form is technically optional. But non-compliance would mean you’d get subpoena’d–those aren’t optional, you can accrue fines and eventually a bench warrant for contempt for not complying with a properly issued subpoena.

At the end of the day you’ve chosen to operate a business, that carries with it exposure to more significant bookkeeping, regulatory, and paperwork interactions with the government than someone living a private life. If you don’t like it you can retire I suppose, or go back to paying someone to do it for you. I know more businessmen who have lost their business due to not minding the store in terms of paperwork (i.e. getting taxes paid, complying with regulations, getting proper permits etc etc) than I do from actually going belly up due to lack of business. It’s not something you can treat like a joke or ignore if you take your livelihood very seriously. You’re also not dealing with a supplier or a customer when you’re dealing with a court, fits of being “cute” by telling a court “here’s a big stack of trash find what you want in it” is likely not a winning proposition for you. You have a general obligation for a number of reasons to maintain proper records that can be provided upon request–note the W2 is as much your record as the employees, and you’re responsible for maintaining them.

11

An employee is suing the father of one of her kids because he stopped sending her child support. She is down as the plaintiff, the defendant wasn’t a name I recognized. I just texted another employee who filled me in.

I’m 63, and I’m really pissed off over this. Push comes to shove, yeah, maybe.

My accountant has copies, I’m certain. I assume she’d charge me to print out a copy, but if I invoice the court will they reimburse?

This just doesn’t seem right.

12

A business owner is expected to maintain records, and be able to access them. Your business manager or accountant should have provided these records to you. It’s the business owner’s responsibility to keep them. (You’re supposed to keep 7 years’ worth for most employment records.) Are you certain you weren’t provided them? I bet you could get them to email it to you for no charge - it’s pretty basic.

I get hit with employment verifications all the time - date of hire, last raise, etc. (lots of mortgage refi verifications). It’s a nuisance, but it’s just part of running a business.

I’ve never worked at a place where I couldn’t later have access to information such as what you’re asking about. W-2’s are pretty common.

Why save it if you can’t find what you need when you need it? I’ll bet you could could find someone to organize your boxes of records for you, if you’re not into doing it yourself, for minimum wage or beer money.

13

I am guessing your business operates in an area of minimal regulation. I can tell you that in commercial real estate we do hundreds of hours of work a year complying with government regulations. I am very surprised this would seem unusual to a business owner or you’d expect anyone to pay you for it.

There’s a reason us Chamber of Commerce types have generally voted Republican. Complying with government rules is time consuming and unenjoyable.

There are large companies that literally have entire teams dedicated to compliance, court orders etc and they’re almost never compensated by the courts. FWIW there actually are a few scenarios where corporations can get reimbursed for subpoena compliance. Not common though.

14

Not that I’m aware of.
There’s “free filing” so you don’t have to pay to compute your taxes, but you still have to do it yourself.

15

heh when i lived with my OCD cousin I used to get annoyed because shed sort and resort any piece of paper social security and insisted I keep 20-year-old paperwork that I wanted to toss

When the SSA decided my genetic disibility just disappeared one year and I had to get an SSI advocate who needed paperwork she walked in with 2 shopping bags full of extremely sorted paperwork so she could contact the original doctors in 2 states that said why yes I’m disabled …

Come to find out social security had lost all my paperwork in the mid-90s and I had the only legal copies which were put in the public record and I kept my SSI…

16

I texted with my lawyer (a friend) who told me this is not the hill I want to die on. If the court complains about my response to their request, he is certain he can convince them I responded to the best of my ability.

I still think it is inappropriate to expect me to perform work without compensation. But c’est la vie. (I’ll translate that for you if you buy me a beer)

17

Not a lawyer obviously but I did do a little bit of research last night on the scenarios where you can get financially compensated for work done to satisfy a subpoena because I was aware that some of the big tech companies had started to charge law enforcement for subpoena, search warrant etc work. What it comes down to is the general rule is that the subject of the subpoena (you) generally incurs the cost of satisfying it, but if those costs are excessive or unreasonable you can seek compensation–another factor is also how linked your business is with the litigation, if you’re a party to the litigation, or even if you are not a party to the litigation but your company is involved in the dispute the courts are much less likely to approve you being compensated for executing the subpoena.

There was a cited case where a company was given a subpoena that involved a very large document request, the company attempted to get compensation of $44,000 for the amount of man hours used–the court turned them down because it determined the maintenance and retrieval of those documents wasn’t an undue burden or excessive. With that in mind I think actually trying to get compensated for a child support form where you have to provide some W2 and personal data about a single employee probably not very realistic.

FWIW having to provide information to the government over child support cases is a pretty common occurrence for me; I had never seen a request like that come with a warning of court action, but that may be the default legalese such things are sent with in your state, I’m not sure. I will say that child support adds another wrinkle–the actual child support laws were basically written such that we as employers basically have a mandated obligation to help the child support system function. It can seem annoying, but my assumption is the laws were specifically written that way because it’s easy to imagine a business owner who is “buddies” with an employee who is under a child support order he doesn’t want to pay, or even just a disinterested employer, who would muck up the system if given significant leeway.

Having to comply with the child support system is a pretty normal part of having employees.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion about government bureaucracy, I think you know how far those opinions go in affecting the behavior of the government or the courts.

Also being quite serious, the sort of information request you say you were hit with–employee information, wages, benefits, W2s…that would take me maybe 5 minutes to pull out of my computerized employee records system (and my partnership is a small business, I basically implemented that system myself one summer years ago.) I’m not saying you have to do similar…but it really shouldn’t be a big effort for you to pull information like that together. It sounds like your business manager was doing a lot of stuff you don’t want to do–I’m just going to reiterate, don’t let your paperwork shit get out of order, I’ve seen many businesses undone by that very problem. Paperwork isn’t fun and not everyone is good at it, but it has to be done.

If hiring a business manager isn’t in the cards anymore, try at least getting a cheap metal filing cabinet, buy a pack of hanging files, and label each file with the name of an employee then alphabetize them. Put every document you ever generate or issue to an employee in their folder. Getting all your current documents sorted might take you a day, but maintaining such a system going forward will require minimal effort, and if you’re ever hit with trouble again you can just pull the file and have everything ready to go.

There’s a retention period (legally) on some of this stuff, once you’ve passed it feel free to toss the file.

18

Heh. My business manager had everything in a computer program. When she retired I played around with the program for a day or three, then gave up. Everything since is just paper, and not necessarily filed as much as boxed and put in the attic.

Prior to this the only time my small (very) business has been bothered by government has been when ex-employees filed for UC after they quit. I’d fill out the paperwork and get their claim squashed. Come to think about it, I wonder why the claimant wasn’t required to pay my expenses when I proved they did not qualify.

19

You generally don’t get your expenses paid in disputes of a legal nature, but in an administrative hearing like an unemployment procedure or a judicial one in a court.

20

About the only “recompense” that I’ve ever seen is that I am allowed to charge my employee a few dollars for filling out and sending in garnishment paperwork.

I’ve never done that, as they are already getting a bit screwed over, so I don’t feel like adding even a straw to that back.

As to the OP, yeah, I get hit with all sorts of employment verification requests. I certainly occupies some of my time I’d rather be doing something else.

Sometimes, the request is on the behalf of the employee, if they are trying to get a mortgage or something like that. Would you feel as resentful towards an employee who generated such a request?

The only time I am particularly annoyed is when I’m filling out unemployment claims, as that is someone who no longer works for me trying to get me to pay them. Of course, those are the only ones that no one will mind if you don’t fill out, you just end up paying more on your unemployment insurance.