New York Independent Contractor Agreement
New York requires a written contract for most freelance engagements worth $800 or more, and it sets a 30-day payment clock when the contract is silent. Worker status is decided by a common-law control test in most industries, with a statutory presumption of employment in construction and commercial trucking. A contract label does not settle the question.
What New York law does to this document
Written contract at $800
The state Freelance Isn't Free Act took effect on August 28, 2024. It covers a freelance worker who is a natural person or an organization of no more than one natural person, hired for services worth $800 or more alone or combined with other work for the same hiring party over the preceding 120 days. The contract must be in writing and the hiring party must keep it for at least six years. Sales representatives, attorneys, licensed medical professionals and construction contractors are outside the definition.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §§ 1410, 1412What the contract must say
The written contract must give the name and mailing address of each party and an itemization of the services with their value. It must also state the rate and method of pay and the date payment is due or the way that date will be set. Where the freelancer has to submit a list of services to be paid on time, the contract must give the date for doing so.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 1412(2)Payment within 30 days by default
Payment is due on or before the date stated in the contract. If the contract states no date, payment is due no later than 30 days after the freelance worker completes the services. A freelancer who wins a late-payment claim is entitled to double damages and reasonable attorney's fees and costs.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §§ 1411(1), 1414(3)Classification turns on control
New York courts ask how much control the hiring party exercises over the results produced or the means used to achieve them. The Court of Appeals looks at whether the worker set their own hours, could take other work, received fringe benefits, was on the payroll and kept a fixed schedule. In 2020 the court upheld a finding that app-based couriers were employees for unemployment insurance because the company controlled the work.
Bynog v. Cipriani Group, 1 N.Y.3d 193 (2003); Matter of Vega (Postmates Inc.), 35 N.Y.3d 131 (2020)Presumed employees in two industries
In construction, a person performing services for a contractor is classified as an employee unless a three-part test is met or the person is a separate business entity. The worker must be free from control and direction, perform a service outside the usual course of the contractor's business, and be customarily engaged in an independent trade. A parallel statute applies to drivers in commercial goods transportation.
N.Y. Labor Law §§ 861-c, 862-bNew York City has its own ordinance
New York City's Freelance Isn't Free Act uses the same $800 and 120-day threshold and the same 30-day payment default. It remains in the Administrative Code alongside the state statute, so a hiring party in the city should meet both.
N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§ 20-928, 20-929Where people go wrong in New York
- Engaging a freelancer for $800 or more on an email or a handshake, when General Business Law § 1412 requires a written contract with specific contents.
- Treating a signed independent contractor agreement as proof of status, or relying on the generator's classification addendum, which describes the ABC test and the federal economic-reality test but not the common-law control test New York courts apply.
- Hiring a subcontractor for hazardous work without confirming its workers' compensation coverage, which can leave the hiring contractor liable for compensation to the subcontractor's injured employees under Workers' Compensation Law § 56.
How the generator works
A work-for-hire consulting agreement that assigns IP, sets payment and SOW terms, and is drafted to support genuine contractor classification under the ABC test. Answer a short interview and the draft assembles as you go, with New York already set as the governing state. Download it as PDF or Word. No fee. No account.