if a sales contractor took an advance and a laptop and never came back to work wont answer any calls etc can I 1099 them for the money, laptop and time spent to train them? How do I best handle this to get the most of a write off that I can and how do I write it off do I invoice the contractor for the laptop and
1099 a contractor
Answers
I would talk to your General Counsel before you do anything, that being said you have several options:
1. Criminal complaint
2. Civil complaint
3. Invoice the contractor
You can't 1099 the individual if they worked for the contractor directly.
1
What have you documented so far?
Can you prove providing the laptop?
Did you log calls made?
Do you have emails?
Were there witnesses to any interaction, in person, phone?
Who in your company introduced the person to you?
Common sense would say, all your contractors should have signed an equipment agreement at the beginning of their assignment, which specified the recoverable value of the equipment should they not return it in working order.
The agreement is the basis for the legal right to bill them for recovery or to sue them if they do not repay.
While it's fun to think of how to "get them" as in issuing a 1099-Misc, you don't want your firm to be known as one to perform questionable practices or to have a history of threatening behavior toward your resources.
If you have tried to contact them multiple times without response and you have sent them a bill for the approximate replacement value and they have not paid up, then you should file a police report to report this as a theft, use their last known address and the cops will follow up with them, by either charging them with a crime or charging them and returning your equipment to you.
This is how it's done in retail. You need the paper trail, and reporting a crime is actionable without an attorney.
In court, you won't recover the "training time" because the onus on the firm to properly train the resources, unless your contractor signed an agreement stating they would repay if they terminated, which no contractor will sign. They will just go down the road and sign on with a different firm.
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