My casting calls in 2021 have this criteria for auditioners:
Not residing in the State of Washington, if living in the United States.
I’ve been reasonably asked “why?” a few times. I don’t feel like cluttering up the casting call description with an explanation, so here it is – neatly tucked onto a web page for the curious.
Short “TL;DR” Summary
For tax accounting reasons, I don’t want to work with voice actors in my home state.
More Complete Explanation
Disclaimer: There is absolutely no legal or accounting advice given here. I’m only explaining what I do and why I do it.
I live in the state of Washington. There’s a definition of “contractor” here that would require a voice actor to be registered as a legal business entity. Most of the people I cast haven’t done that. It would be ridiculous for me to ask them to do that for the smaller parts and pay I’m offering for my productions.
Occasionally, a voice actor will be set up as a business in Washington state. They filed the paperwork with the three different agencies, and at the federal level, they got a UBI/EIN. But then I’d need to verify that, which is extra work for both me and the voice actor that isn’t justified by the tiny little part I want to pay them for.
A second criteria for a voice actor to be considered a “contractor”: the actor must perform the work without any external management or direction. What if we want to do a live direction session? Legally, that would disallow me from paying you as a contractor.
If my home state won’t recognize you as a contractor, then any payment I give you requires you to be an employee. That carries with it further accounting and tax reporting obligations.
There is no “too small” threshold according to the State. If I pay you ten bucks, and you don’t meet the requirements for being considered a contractor, I’m legally required to pay you as an employee.
“Oh, come on!” you might say. “No bureaucrat is going to care about some tiny little voice acting project.”
Not true. I’ve been through an audit with the employment services division, and it was a deciding factor in closing my voiceover studio. Very un-fun stuff. I had to dig up all kinds of records and present them. It put fear in my gut.
This sadly remains an obstacle to working with most of the people in the core Seespace Labs troupe we put together in 2016. Besides just enjoying those people a lot, I went through months of auditioning to find that talent and learn what they could do.
I’m not mad at Washington State. It’s difficult to craft laws that cover every edge case like mine. There are many things about my home state and its laws that I’m very proud of.
I even liked my ESD auditor. She was super-nice.
-Erik Hermansen