Fins, those are among the many objections to this plan, but I LOVE the idea that it's illegal to compensate her. Would the concept be that she can't legally be compensated because she's not licensed?

Well, it IS illegal to pay her as put forth.

A possible work around is that you put her on the payroll, or pay her via 1099 as a subcontractor.

If she is likely to get you more business, I would try to accommodate in some legal manner.

To me, the easiest way is for her to require a cost plus from the client, but naturally she doesn't really want this, because the client that is already paying her, will likely fire her for doing so (you both lose).

If CA has a license for what we do, and if you have one (I assume both to be yes), then call the licensing board and ask them.

I'm sure the tax guys would like a 'tip' about here business too.

CA has the C7 license for low voltage contractors, I had one when I lived out west. I was never in this position luckily.

That's the kind of situation where the person (GC, usually) who brings in a sub charges their percentage. The Interior Detonator didn't have to call you- she could have called anyone else.


Define the payment schedule at the outset- that way, any delays can be subject to a penalty.


Boo hoo. If she wants to be in charge of who does what, she needs to be willing to do some paperwork. If you state that you want payment within ten days of the invoice being received, the 'recipient' should be determined beforehand.


Depends- if you speak with the homeowner and discuss things having to do with that project, you could slip comments in about other projects where charges were added- if they aren't in favor of it, it's up to you to determine whether their relationship with the detonator is important to the homeowner, not. If they really like the detonator, the charges may be reversed but if the detonator is a vindictive bitch, they may go after you for lost business.

You might want to discuss this with the desecrator, to find out if the charges were approved by the homeowner. It's a common thing for a GC to do and she's not one of those, although 10% seems high- I don't know if it's typical in CA.

No, she didn't. That's why she didn't. Instead, the client's PA (That does not mean Pennsylvania), whom I met no a previous job at a client who was my client before she was his PA... she's the one who called me.

Right.

I suspect she wants to avoid the time and cost. It's totally a non-business-like reason, I'm sure.


Again, the PA, not the inferior defecator.


She would be completely lost as to how to do this. Plus, it would reveal details she'd rather just keep quiet.

This is definitely the right idea.

"I can't go because I'm totally, like, getting a mani-pedi"?


Everyone knows at least one lawyer- she doesn't need to know how.

I'd say you can pay her a % of the profit, (10%), but she's also getting a 1099.

Ernie,
Let us know how it turns out.

A "Finder Fee" for a paying client client about $100 for a bigger project (no hang and bang) might be acceptable. If they want 10% they need to do all the design work and specification if they expect to get paid as a commissioned salesperson. Oh and 1099 for sure.

I'm definitely waiting for her to bring it up.

I'm imagining something like this:
You've brought this up before and I've had some time to think about it and look into it.

My first reaction is that if some of the money that I bill goes to you, then you need to write me an invoice for it so my tax paperwork can show I don't need to pay taxes on those amounts. Otherwise I'll be paying income tax on money that's going to you. And you'll be getting a 1099 from me.

Next, you don't want me to change my rates. That means that I'll have one client from whom I earn less money than all my other clients. The actual result of that is that ALL other clients are at the top of my list except for this one. If it were you, would you respond equally to all clients?

The law is pretty hard to interpret on this, but it might be illegal. If you have a contract with the client that says you hire me and you tell me what to do and you charge the client an amount that's a fixed percentage of my billing, then that's okay. And that might no be okay since you don't have a contractor's license.

A major part of that last bit is that the client needs to know an authorize that you are getting payment as a part of what is paid to me.

End of statement. That's how I'm rehearsing it, but it would probably come out a bit more friendly than that seems.

In the commercial work I do, everyone recognizes that the GC has no idea what I'm doing. There's no way he knows enough about it to tell me when to do different things, and he doesn't know what needs to be done. So I'm hired by the client separately from all the other trades. My interaction with the GC is to work with his schedule and do things in a way that doesn't delay the project. The GC does not earn any money in this situation because he's not doing anything except be open about his schedule... which he has to do anyway.

The bold part is what I'm dealing with at a home where I'm working- the guy doing the carpentry/cabinet install decided to say that he thinks the cable will be visible over the TV in the kitchen, so it should come up inside of the dead space at the corner. That means the new Granite counter will need a hole and some kind of grommet, at the corner, where there's almost no material between the corner and the edge. I want to bring the HDMI cable down from the upper cabinet to the TV and bundle it with the power cord because the power cord will be visible, but the HDMI is much thinner and I was planning to use vinyl dye to make both white. I told him that the hole would need to be slightly larger than the HDMI plug and he said he thought I would be using coax, then he said "Oh, I didn't know you were using that kind of cord".

I almost came back with "But that didn't stop you from opening your yap, did it?".

The TV is 1.5" short of the bottom of the upper cabinet- if the TV is behind the corner where the cabinets meet, the only way it will be visible is if the person's line of sight is 49" +/- about 2". Any higher or lower and it can't possibly be seen.

Putz.

Yeah, that never helps. It's the fuel of many an adolescent dream comeback, for which see reddit's "MaliciousCompliance" section.

Instead, something like "We need to be sure we put in the right stuff on this installation. I'm surprised that you didn't know what kind of cable we'd be using. I DO know, and there are a lot of other details about present-day TVs that you might not know. I think I should be making the decisions about how to wire things."

That won't be welcomed, but it's rational and it states the issues rather than slapping the guy.



Well, yeah, unless the household members are all four foot one.

If you knew the guy, you wouldn't be surprised. He seems to like sticking his nose in places where it doesn't belong.

If the cabinets were in place, I could show him very easily why his idea isn't a good one but I have met an incredible number of people who can't visualize this kind of thing. I could bring coax up and mount the cable box to the backside of the TV, but if it comes from the corner of the counter top, it will be more visible from more locations than if it comes from the upper cabinet and is bundled with the power cord. |

The husband is over 6' and the wife is about 4'-10".