Painting business owners should collect W-9s from subcontractors before interviews or work starts, using refusal as a screening tool. If a contractor won't provide one but is owed money, you can use IRS backup withholding to protect yourself.
Chapters
when they're hiring a new subcontractor, there's sometimes this negotiation that goes on like, hey, I don't want to fill out a W-9, just go ahead and just pay me. It really needs to be done before they do any kind of work for you. I've worked with a lot of folks on incorporating this into their subcontractor hiring process. What they'll do, they'll source their subcontractors a certain way. Maybe they make a post on Craigslist to kind of announce, like, I have a little job out looking for subcontractors for painting, and you push them to schedule an interview with you or a phone call with you to do some initial screening. So what you could do is, is have them fill out some initial information before you even talk to them on the phone, either having them fill out a W-9 or the information for the W-9 before you even talk to them, just to make sure you get that information up front so you don't have to go waste your time interviewing them. And saying, oh, they're a good fit. And then they pull this whole answer of, oh, I'm not gonna fill out a W-9. You've just wasted a couple hours of your time trying to screen 'em and everything. Just get that documentation up as early as possible, your subcontractor hiring process.
Yeah, I think that that's smart. Personally, if a contractor refuses to do a W-9 for me, I probably don't wanna work with that person. It's not worth the headache. That being said, if you do owe a contractor money and they refuse to fill out the W-9, there are provisions to protect yourself. And that's where backup withholding comes in.
