Only if, upon receiving their 1099's, they did not report that income and pay taxes on it. As a 1099 worker, you are responsible for paying regular income tax, 100% of FICA and AND a self employment tax. (The 2nd half of FICA and the SE tax are the share that would have been paid by an employer if not self employed). If anything, the teachers could have a claim against LA for the SE taxes that they paid which, if the IRS deems they were actually employees and not contractors, should have been paid by LA.

This is correct. Gift Cards are referred to as "Prepaid Revenue," aka Unearned Revenue. Large multi-billion dollar corporations have trouble with this too, they just have deeper pockets to recover with. I have audited and found significant issues with a corporation so large that at least 50% of the people reading this have one of their products in their home. Mistakes can be as costly as fraud.

I am going to explicate a specific phrase in your post which is so very pervasive in our largely faith-based homeschool community. (This is not an attack on you or your choice Random! I just think this phrase is worth discussing). Make no mistake folks - these homeschool programs are MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESSES and we are the target market. This is NOT bad, but we cannot allow ourselves to buy into these buzzy phrases about service and being a blessing and sharing our heart, etc. Businesses. Run by people who are passionate about their purpose, mission and target market? Sure. But businesses!!!!! Likewise with Veritas last night and their offer to give grace and extend the hand of God to the LA community. The fact is - we are a target market for VP too, and they offered a discounted service in hopes of gaining significant market share and securing future revenue. It's the same reason milk is discounted at the grocer! Again - this is not bad, but let's don't be naive about it! I think it's ok to keep a warm heart and remain faithful in our community while also participating shrewdly in a business transaction as consumers, just as these businesses are doing so. And -- We talk about "taking God's name in vain" and think it refers to using OMG. But that's doesn't seem all that hard, does it, to not utter God's name casually like that? I have long felt that we should dig a little deeper and see with clear eyes that taking God's name in vain is a far more insidious practice -- far more tempting, far more potentially gainful. It is ok for a business to say "these are our values, we'll share them," but we should be wary of any business that positions themselves as a blessing to the community or striving to be one. Any business' number one goal should be to remain in business (e.g. pay their bills, and keep going for as long as the owners wish to keep going) by serving their customers and stakeholders (owners!) well. And if the owners view God as the primary stakeholder, then great!!!

1. LLC does not protect you from tax debt unless it is an LLC that has elected to be taxed as a corporation, rather than taxed as a partnership. The former is less common, as it comes with the same kind of complications that other entity types bring. Thus: Any tax owed is owed by the owner. 2. If you are collecting fees in advance of performing the service, you essentially have what is called "Unearned Revenue." This is actually a liability. From a tax perspective, it is possible to not pay taxes on this Unearned Revenue. When you actually perform the service, the unearned revenue must be reclassified to Earned Revenue, or in accounting parlance -- it gets "recognized." If Landry Academy never bothered to recognize the revenue when services were actually performed, then they collected cash, never recorded it as revenue, and basically failed to pay income tax on a lot lot lot of revenue. This is called fraud. And you can be guilty of fraud, even it's just that your records are disorganized. It can be difficult to keep track of unearned revenue and then recognize it at the right time. 3. A prepaid model of this type can only last so long as it is growing. If the amount of prepaids owed exceeds growth, then - imagine this - you have a semester which is 100% comprised of students who paid last year or some other time -- meaning no revenue is coming in and yet you have to still provide the service and incur the costs of doing so. This is when you collapse. You either collapse because you actually collapsed (as in, used the money and don't have it anymore), or because the government collapses you for collecting prepaids and then failing to keep it in an escrow account or otherwise holding it until recognized. I guarantee you that farm is up for auction and this business is closing not just because of contractor misclassification. There's a big debt owed to the IRS here and it has to do with income tax/revenue AND/OR the prepaid cash was not held in escrow until recognized and they literally do not have the money to keep operations going.

"We do not have a latin tutor. She plans to use Rosetta Stone and the Latin Curriculum....not sure about that move, but its probably a good way to get our feet wet." The goal of learning Latin is to learn to work through the logical application of grammar rules and sentence structures. It's like a more abstract form of computer programming. (Maybe no one will agree with that statement, but as I took 2 years of VB and 1 year of COBOL at University I personally make a strong connection between this and Latin). It's a logical translation process and the learning is in the working. It's a private effort. The boy and the books. The tutor isn't all that needed. The book, a strong mind, and a diligent student willing to put in AN HOUR A DAY are what is needed. My son LOATHED this process for the first 75 exercises. It felt like being chained to a desk. It's hard. I told him that "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly...for a WHILE...until you can do it well." Guess what. Something clicked on #76 and now he is a Latin-workin'-maniac. He sees it is hard. And now, he sees he can do it. Voila. This is hard, and I can do it. The boy is transformed! This process has done wonders for his feelings of "can do" and self worth. He's a changed man in this house. It's even changed the way he engages with us, his sisters, and his chores. It knocked the lazy-bum right out of him. WHEREAS, to go through Rosetta Latin would, in my mind, be a big waste of time as it doesn't involve the work. It doesn't put the learner into a book and into the original words from the great works of antiquity. The classical learner's goal of learning Latin is not to be conversational in Latin. The purpose of the tutor is not to teach the Latin... it's to help you help your child remain accountable to (what will sometimes feel like) the drudgery of those early fumbling steps toward proficiency in Latin study. Note I didn't say proficiency in Latin. Proficiency in *study*! This is a six years process! Also, I would check to see if your particular CC Challenge A location is using Henle or the other book. Henle is hard. It's a big boy book. The CC students spend (I think) three years in that book even though it's designed to be a 1 year HS/College book. That's a good thing....with long and thorough and repetitive use of an infinitely rich book. The alternative? A dummy-down kiddie book. Not all CC locations have switched to Henle for Challenge A, and so those kids aren't starting it until Challenge I. In my opinon -- a mistake....

Hello, This can be done. We are doing it. We are loving it. The trick is to pay attention to what is happening in Challenge A (check the "guide" each week) and decide which assignments you will and won't be doing. You will likely find that your child has already read some of the books that are used in Challenge, and for those weeks you might opt to put more focus on Omnibus and pass on some of the CC assignments. During weeks where I require that my son do ALL of the Challenge A coursework, we don't do as much Omnibus; I would say we progress through it at about 50% of our normal pace; note that our normal pace is about 50% of what is listed in the reading guide for Omnibus. So yeah - we go slow. But--- we school year round and only do 4-5 hour school days. I would argue that CC alone is NOT ENOUGH. It covers a light swath of science, some geo memory work, latin, reading/writing, and math. Many will argue with me about CC and suggest that it's an all or nothing program. I realize that each child is different. But for us, CC is a supplement to our spine -- which is a combination of Omnibus and loosely followed Sonlight (Core G -- which covers early World History -- a perfect accompaniment to Omnibus I). By loosely followed, I mean that I make the chrono/topical matches between the Sonlight literature and what we are studying in Omnibus and give these books to my son for his night reading. These books are easy and a breath of fresh air compared to the Omnibus reading so it rounds things out. The CC readers are rather easy as well, FOR NOW. I realize that with Challenge I and beyond the opposite will be true! As for CC, I am perfectly straightforward with his tutor and provide her with an email update each week of what my son will and won't be responsible for doing. During the discussions for which he has not performed the requisite preparation, he is required to sit and listen. I talk to him frequently about whether this feels like a waste of time, and his answer is always no. He gets something from the dialogue, even if we have chosen not to do a specific assignment. (To give an example, while I required him to read The Secret Garden with his mates during week 1, I did not require him to write the corresponding paper for week 2 -- becuase he had another Omnibus writing assignment that I thought would be more interesting, robust, and value-added for him). We also incorporate the Veritas Press timeline cards, specifcally the 200 timeline points which are included in the CC Foundations memory work. Since my firstborn did not go through CC Foundations, he is learning these memory cards along with my youngers. (Note that for CC, this synergy is set to change, as CC has devloped their own cards and timeline points. However, we will continue to use the VP timeline points and cards as these allow as to cross CC for our youngers over to what we are doing with Omnibus for 7th grade plus. If ultimately this change means that CC's Foundations history timeline doesn't work for my youngers, then we'll drop them out of the Memory Master plan for that subject area). Note that for CC Challenge, you absolutely cannot opt in and out of Latin on an ad hoc basis (if your CC location has switched over to Henle). Latin must be done every day. Likewise with Math. However, in our case, as we dislike Saxon wholeheartedly, my son sits through the Math portion at CC and "gets what he can" while we do Singapore and TT at home. To reinforce my comments about CC not being enough, I would argue that our primary benefit of CC-A is that my son has the opportunity to read his papers, hear other papers, participate in the dialogue, and prepare for such group activities as Debate and Drama (in later Challenge levels). The curriculum itself doesn't necessarily add to or get in the way of what we are doing with Omnibus. It's separate and supplementary! We are very committed to CC and glad to be a part of it, and none of what I have written above is intended to be a criticism of CC or an indictment of those who make an entire curriculum of it!!! The beauty of homeschool is that we get to take what we like, mix and match, and enjoy the ride with our kids!