If they do that sort of thing, it may violate the definition of the contractor status for tax purposes, and you may be reclassified as an employee.

If they do what sort of thing? Monitor stuff?

It all depends on the nature of the consultancy agreement. If you work for the financial industry as a consultant you can expect to allow monitoring.

I don't know of a single place that makes the law clear, but if you dig in a bit, you can find a lot of resources that describe the legal differences between contractors and employees. One thing that's evident in nearly anything you can find is that contractors basically have no protections.

So if you think about this way, where federal, state or local laws might protect against things like unreasonable surveillance of an employee, very few, if any, protections are in place for contractors.

The IRS doesn't care in the slightest if an employer monitors a contractor.

Feels like you're moving the goalposts. Article doesn't mention anything about monitoring the screen remotely. You could rephrase it as "if you hire a consultant with the expectation that they will attend in person 3 days a week, do you expect to be able to verify that is happening?"

I’m not replying to the article. I’m replying to a specific comment. Monitoring remotely is as close as I could get to “following the plumber around”.

Contractors are not employees. This is about employees.

The key difference between the two is precisely that employers are not presumed to watch and control how a contractor works.

That is incorrect. That "key difference" is not even remotely a universal truth.

I've been a consultant and an employee many times in my career. You can take any variation of the following sentence and it'll remain true:

I've worked for a company as a [ hourly consultant | salaried employee | per project consultant ] that [ monitored my every keystroke | monitored attendance | monitored nothing ].

Every variation is possible, and I've seen every variation.

>If you don’t trust me, don’t hire me

Exactly, but how can I trust you without knowing you ? Trust but verify right ?

I've also been a consultant and worked in a place where they manage sensitive data. They told you on day 1 that the computer they provided is monitored for everything and that they can take screenshot from time to time. If you don't agree, you don't work there.

> The output of the work should be all that matters.

Not when you're hired hourly/weekly/monthly, the output is irrelevant. If a company hire you for your time, it means that your time is at "their" disposal. If they tell you to be at the office during that time, you're supposed to be there.

And if they think that it's best for them to have you sit in a room with 20 other zoom callers for the possibility that you might talk with someone down the hall and that it might raise the revenue, that's their decision.

Work is a business relation between 2 entities with rules in place, if 1 entity doesn't like some rules, the relation stops.

And as they are paying, they have the right to verify that they receive what they're paying for, whatever it is.

Just like it's my decision to accept that I must pay the plumber for his time when I ask him to explain me some stuff about my boiler that I could read online.