mckeetree
Addicted to ArboristSite
Several months ago I attended a little Q&A meeting sponsored by a local insurance agency that was geared toward contractors. Homeowners or anybody else were welcome to attend and the turnout was pretty small, just a few folks. I know insurance laws vary from state to state but In Texas the insurance industry has managed to define "contractor" and "employee" a little better. The liability portion of homeowner policies in Texas no longer have to cover a "contractor" if he or his employees are injured on the homeowners property. I had known this for some time but it is one of the things the speaker at the meeting brought out. Also, if they don't meet the definition of contractor (in other words no business license, not a corp. or LLC, no DBA statement on file, no tax number, no schedule C, no nothing, etc.) they can be classified as a employee. And the liability portion of homeowner policies does not necessarily cover employees either. It's like one lawyer in Tyler, Texas said to a homeowner concerning a Hispanic guy that fell out of a tree.."You say he is not an employee huh? Well he is not in business, at least in any capacity that defines a business, and you "employed" him to trim a tree. What else would you call him?" Texas is the only state that workers comp is not mandatory and we are one of the few small tree services that carry it. The guy speaking at the meeting told me I should inform would be clients that their homeowners may opt out in the event of an accident and use that as a sales tool when we mention we carry workers comp. I have tried it and people just get freaking mad. I even have some material I can leave with them to read and that seems to put them off. One guy today started screaming "YAAAAA...my homeowners covers anything that happens here..YAAAAA...nobody can touch me no matter who I hire. I wish the insurance industry would get the word out to consumers about what their homeowners covers because 99.9% of them think it covers anything and everything.