I liked being an employee. Hell, I even liked team-building exercises. 
But I wanted to move back home and couldn’t find a job here, so I opened a private practice. I expected that I wouldn’t like it, and that I would make less money. Wrong on both counts. Being self-employed rocks.
Everything just sort of fell into place. After finishing my master’s degree I saw that there wasn’t really anywhere to go on an editorial track. At the same time the company was being acquired by a Dutch publisher and management was looking to improve margins by reducing headcount, among other things. I offered to move into an independent contractor arrangement, without guaranteed continuity and without benefits, and would be free to offer the same services elsewhere as long as they weren’t directly competing.
Thirteen years later, the publisher is still a client and pays me in fees about what I was making in salary when I left, give or take in a given year, but that represents only about 25% of my income.
No meetings, no paperwork, no teambuilding, no organizational exercises, no commuting, no office politics, no coffee-breathing close-talking stinky-stocking cubicle-kilroying co-workers, and quite often no shoes.
The ability to manage my time as I wished.
If they were professional actors, yes. I would become ‘the engager’ in all our contracts, which would be Canadian Actors’ Equity Association (CAEA) contracts, unless ‘the engager’ were based in the province of Québec, in which case the contracts would be Union des Artistes (UdA).
If it were an amateur theatre company, you could make arrangements to treat your amateur performers as employees.
The specifics are extremely complex, and I don’t begin to understand them all. The gist of it is - if actors (collectively) became employees, we would gain various benefits such as Employment Insurance. We would lose our ability to claim our expenses, such as coachings, lessons, books, recordings, self-promotion, show tickets. At present, there is much more benefit to performers to be able to claim their expenses.
(I’m focusing on actors because that’s what you were asking about in your question - the situation is similar for musicians and dancers. It’s much easier to see how writers and visual artists, who tend to work alone, fit as self-employed.)
It isn’t up to us - if Revenue Canada were to decide we should be considered employees, we (collectively) could appeal the decision and lobby our MPs to alter and enshrine our status in law. In the meantime, we would have no choice but to abide by whatever Revenue Canada imposes. Status of the Artist legislation is an extremely low priority for any of the political parties.
Tax wise, we are in a vast grey area - we file our taxes based on the best advice of professional accountants, for the most part, and if we get audited, we hope we have someone who understands how the business works. It doesn’t help that there are a lot of things that for us are legitimate expenses that are enjoyable leisure activities for civilians. Take a show, for example. If you think it’s fun to sit in a theatre and watch the guy who got cast in a part that you auditioned for, you’ve never had to do it. It’s sort of like going to your ex-lovers wedding, only more painful. Then you get to go backstage and try to be positive so that you might get a role in the next thing that company is casting for.
Muffin has pretty much nailed it with the analogy of sub-contractors. Length of engagement has nothing to do with it - the idea is that we are engaged for a service (a role in a production) or services (‘as cast’ in a season at, say, the Stratford Festival or Manitoba Theatre Centre) and when that production or season is ended, we are available to be engaged by any theatre, opera, film company, up to and including the company whose production or season we were just in. Just as you may engage Jose to do the drywall on the second floor of your house, but once the job is done you may engage his arch-rival Thorvald to drywall the third floor. You may offer Jose the chance to paint the second floor that he drywalled and he has the choice of taking the job or turning it down. None of the above arrangements have made Jose or Thorvald your employees.
Very complex … do they have specialty accounting firms that cater to artists that are up on all the minutiae of the tax laws as it pertains to the professionals?
Artists make money?
More seriously, there really isn’t a difference between artists and any other self-employed persons when it comes to taxes. At some point, a person may wish to become an employee of his or her own management company, but there is nothing unique about artists in that respect. The contracts get rather thick sometimes. There are some entertainment law botique firms in Canada, but not many.
Except for the fact that I cannot just blow off a day I agree. In my situation, calling off means six others (employees) are not needed and do not get paid that day either.
I left my job in June and am currently in the starting phases of my own business - custom jewelry showcases. I have a very independent streak, and I’m always doing something with my time.
I worked for 12 years as a paralegal in a small firm, starting there when I was 21. Over the years, I watched the attorneys get more and more lazy and more and more rich. Three years ago, on the side, I started doing direct sales of jewelry in home shows to get some extra money. While that didn’t work out, the showcases I made myself got a lot of interest, and after a bit, I decided to see if they were sellable. And they were.
I’ve always wanted to quit and do my own thing, but never had the correct thing to focus on, and the showcases were (finally!) that thing. What pushed me over the edge, past my fears, was when my firm got a 1.2 million dollar check from a case that I had literally shed tears over. The amount of work and stress I had done on this case clearly outweighed the work put in by the boss, and I got a shitty bonus. I knew I was entitled to much more, but the boss just built a new house, and too bad for me.
So, that was it. I spent the rest of the year running numbers, gave my three month notice in March, and was gone at the end of June.
The rewards are fantastic - I get to keep all the money (and in this context, the business counts as me keeping all the money), and I have showcases in 33 states. Things that I designed and made with my hands are all over the country - which is a great feeling.
Now, I’m not making even half of what I made at the firm, and I regularly put in 10 hour days. I am the Marketing Department, Shipping Department, Accountant, etc., but I love learning something new everyday. But this has the potential to become something where I can make far more than what I made at the firm, and it has freed up some of my time to look into other opportunities that will increase my bankroll. My hubby and I are looking into real estate investment, and we’re taking the next year to learn about it, look for properties, and make sure we’re financially secure enough.
Some might say that, for me, it’s about money, but I’m of the opinion that more money equals more freedom.
Buh? But that’s not what you asked for in the OP. Do you want to hear our stories, or to confirm some specific hypothesis? FYI, “being self-employed” and “having no bosses or corporate crap to deal with” are not the same thing.
Me, at one point I ended up in a sector (consulting) where people work either
a) for a consulting firm, in a permanent position,
b) for a string of consulting firms or agencies, using project-length contracts,
or c) for consulting firms or agencies but as a freelancer.
Contract chains can be amazingly long. You run into people who are working for Agent A in London, who subcontracts to Agent B in Madrid, who subcontracts to Consulting Firm C in Barcelona, while End Client D is located in nearby Tarragona. The consultant works in Tarragona, bills London, London bills Madrid, Madrid bills Barcelona and Barcelona bills Tarragona, with everybody along the way taking a cut. Oh, and each team member including the manager(s) may have a completely different chain.
In my first consulting job I was “in-house”, an employee of the end client who got picked up to join the consulting team. The next few jobs were in case b) above; I wasn’t particularly impressed with the different agencies and firms but they weren’t spectacularly bad either. Then I had one where the agency/consulting, rather than make things easier for me (by helping me get the necessary paperwork, get settled, etc), made them harder; they also did not inform me of critical developments in a timely fashion (such as “oh by the way, your contract is until the end of November, but ours was only until the end of September and the client hasn’t renewed, so your contract is over as of September 30th”) and generally behaved in an extremely unprofessional manner (“oh by the way, can you start Septermber 26th in Italy?” “Dude, I’m not done in Switzerland until the 30th!”). At that point I figured I’d give myself a couple months vacation and set up shop as self-employed starting January 1st (which in Spain is the start of the fiscal year as well as the calendar year), and then I went and I did. Now I do my own billing and taxes (it’s actually quite simple), and everybody understands that if I need to go ask for a permit, it’s got to be me doing it, no agency will do it as I’m not an employee of one.
If I ever take up cross-stitching again, that will go on a sampler.
Finally got fed up with having stupid people in charge who weren’t me.
I have been self-employed for the past six years. The first several years (before the economy tanked) were a huge boon to me and I made a killing brokering I.P. addresses. Then I decided to go back to my artistic roots and I have been making and selling jewelry for the past 2 1/2 years. While not necessarily a mistake, I made the decision just before our economy collapsed and it has been an incredibly difficult time to create and try and sell a luxury product.
I am now looking to re-enter the workforce. Ultimately, I need to be around people and self employment with no staff or employees is too lonely for me. I couldn’t even create enough of a social circle without the constant influx of fellow workers. I’m actually looking forward to working for someone again and not having to deal with all of the responsibilities entailed in working for one’s self.
Just as an aside, Revenue Canada has already tried (and failed) to find that dancers in a company are employees, not contractors: Royal Winnipeg Ballet v. M.N.R., 2006 FCA 87, [2007] 1 F.C.R. 35. (Link here.) Although there are a number of factors that a court will consider in determining the question of whether the people in question are employees or independent contractors, and this Court considered them all; control seemed to be the key factor. Essentially, the RWB exercised control over the dancers in such a way that was consistent with the control that would exist in a contractual relationship, instead of in an employee/employer one. From the headnote of the case:
Although I have no doubt that the principles in Royal Winnipeg Ballet could be extended to other performing artists in similar contractual relationships with similar companies, I should add that these kind of things are fact-dependent and that the Court’s reasoning could change depending on the facts. Regardless, I think it is interesting (and I thought you might find it interesting too, Le Ministre) that the contractor or employee question as regards performing artists in a company has already been considered–and Revenue Canada lost.