US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has introduced S.770 - Payroll Fraud Prevention Act. The bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to ensure that employees are not misclassified as non-employees, and impose substantial penalties on employers who are found to have classified bona fide employees as independent contractors for purposes of avoiding payroll taxes. The bill is referred to the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Nannies and senior home-care workers are not independent contractors.

 “Most workers [who are classified as independent contractors] are employees under the FLSA’s broad definitions.” ~ David Weil, Administrator, US Department of Labor Wage and Hour

Nannies and senior home caregivers are almost always employees of the hiring family, yet every year thousands of families classify their nanny or senior caregiver as an "independent contractor" and fail to pay the employment taxes and unemployment taxes on the wage they pay their family's nanny.The IRS estimates that fewer than one in five famlies with a household employee comply with the payroll, tax, and reporting requirements in the tax code. Industry experts place the compliance rate much lower than 20%, and have calculated a $3 BILLION dollar per year tax gap - the taxes owed but not collected on household senior homecare and nanny employment.