Payroll Fraud Prevention Act of 2017

Payroll Fraud Prevention Act of 2017

This bill amends the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to require employers to accurately classify their employees or non-employees as employees or independent contractors and to notify such employees or non-employees of their classification.

The bill makes it unlawful for any person to: (1) discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee or non-employee who has filed a complaint with respect to their employment classification, and (2) wrongly classify an employee as a non-employee. The bill doubles the amount of liquidated damages for unpaid wages and misclassifications of employees.

The bill amends the Social Security Act to: (1) require, as a condition for the federal grant program for unemployment compensation administration, auditing and investigative procedures to identify employers who are not registered under state law or who are paying unreported wages; and (2) impose administrative penalties for misclassification of employees or payment of unreported wages without proper recordkeeping.

The bill requires the Department of Labor to report any misclassification of an employee to its Wage and Hour Division. The Wage and Hour Division is then authorized to report a misclassification to the Internal Revenue Service.