Let me preference this and say my brother and I are looking for other jobs and are stuck with these until something better is found. I'm also on mobile. I'm not sure if I should be posting this here. This may be kinda hard to follow, I can hardly follow it and I work for the companies.
Attempted super quick run down, I was hired in September of 2020 to help my cousin (I know I know, never work or do business with family) run the lawn care company he brought, (Company 1, C1). My office is in a loft above our shop floor inside a gaint storage unit. I was hired on as a secretary, but I feel it was more of an administrative role since I do everything but estimates and mow. Well I've actually helped landscpae and have helped mow when we didn't have the staff.
So anyway, everything was going good until late summer last year. Boss started another LLC to buy a house and property to move our office and shop too. He has plans to turn the house into an AirBnB. Then shortly after that started another LLC, this one is a concrete company, (company 2, C2). Now all that office stuff is supposed falls on my shoulders. Then a few weeks after starting C2, my boss hires on my brother as a mechanic for C1. Then a month or so after that, there's talk about starting another LLC. This time an auto shop. Which was cool since my brother has always wanted to own/run his own autoshop. So they started that one up as 50/50 business partners, (Company 3, C3). The business agreement has been made up since December but it hasn't been signed yet, and my brother has no plans to sign it now. All the office and administrative stuff for C3 also falls on me. But I'm only being paid through C1 for ALL the work I do for all 3 companies, which is for $13/hr.
So onto some of the werid sketchy stuff he's doing. These points are the ones I can think of right away.
-Boss uses C1 debit card to make purchases for non-business related items. Boss and his friends went to Florida last month for some four wheeler race. I checked our account one day and saw 4 different part store purchases in Florida! I'm assuming to fix their four-wheelers
-My brother technically works for both C1 & C3. But the only hrs he gets paid outta C3 are his auto repair labor hrs only. If he's up in the office making the bill and collecting payments he has to clock outta the auto shop and clock back into the lawn care. The same thing when he's waiting around for parts to be delivered.
-One Friday in the summer I made close to a 15k deposit for C1. The following Wednesday, I submitted payroll. I got yelled at because I was the one who supposedly made our account overdrawn by thousands! Where the hell did close to 15k go in 5 days!! I still can't figure out how in the heck we spent that much and I'm in charge of accounting. I can't find it and everything comes out balanced. There was only a couple hundred spent at gas stations and one small cash withdraw in the time frame. Now, I have to ask every payroll if I can submit it or not.
-Our accountant has given my boss a green light to use C1 funds to renovate the house my boss bought with the intentions of eventually paying all that money back to C1. However, i know my boss and how irresponsible he is with money so the chances of thay being paid back are slim. He's shoveled over $35k into this house since late August and wonders why he suddenly doesn't have money to pay his employees.
-I just filed my taxes and found out our payroll comapny only took $7.14 for my federal taxes (we do direct deposit and it is partially my fault for not printing off my pay stubs and making sure everything was coming out correctly). When I asked the payroll people why that was I got this as a response “based on the tax tables and what you earn vs what you claim (married, 0 on the new W-4) there was very little owed for any of the payrolls processed. If you have additional earnings not under this company you can always request via the w-4 to have extra tax withheld”
If I would have filed 'married – separate' I would have owed money! Then I looked back on my first w2 and they didn't take any fed taxes out for 2020!
-This morning boss comes in and tells my brother whenever he's working on anything for C2, he's going to 1099 him, despite my brother's objections. As it'll give him more money and as long as he keeps each check under $600 he shouldn't have to worry about filing the taxes for that. But I'm was under the impression that it's $600 for the whole year not each individual check, besides that, isn't classifying him as an independent contractor illegal when he's already an established employee?
I know we both need to get out asap but living in a tourist area doesn't offer much outside of retail, fast foods and gas stations. And it sucks because I really enjoyed my job before boss started opening up other companies in an attempt to spread the wealth that he makes everyone believe he has. Oh and incase it couldn't get worse, my boss has a “9-5” job that pays all his bills. So he has his job and “runs” 3 other companies.