fee splitting

[Guest guest]

I am so tired of all these people wanting to engage in fee splitting,

though it's an illegal practice. I get job offer after job offer with

percentage based payment (and generally an unfair one in my

estimation). does anyone know the penalty if you get caught fee

splitting? does anyone know of anyone who has gotten caught?

[Guest guest]

Interesting thread. When I practiced in Poulsbo and Seattle, I researched

renting at NIAOM. They were charging a % of patient collections. At the time I

was sure it was a little fishy. But, it was a SCHOOL doing so. If was really,

truly, for certain not legal, would they do it? I guess so!

 

Lynn

 

 

 

mike Bowser <naturaldoc1

Chinese Traditional Medicine

Tuesday, February 13, 2007 8:39:30 PM

RE: fee splitting

 

I would suggest a good attorney to clarify this issue. When a practitioner pays

a % of their patient fees, they are engaging in fee splitting. This does not

need to be necessarily with another practitioner. I have run across an

interesting twist on this as a chiro corp got into trouble when they hired some

foreigners to act as interpreters/ taxi drivers. The DC's plead guilty and got a

reduction in sentence.

 

Independent contractors are supposed to pay rent, not a % of collections. One is

an independent fixed cost that is separate from collections and the other is

tied into it. By being tied to it, you run into difficultyshowing that these two

are separate entities.

 

Acupuncturetoday. com ran an excellent article (archives) by Dr. McNamee

(DC/LAc) on independent contractor vs. employee.

What tends to happen a lot is that step into situations where a landlord is

telling us how it is and we assume it is legal and correct. From the article,

you can see that things need to line up in one column or the other and not pick

things from both. These two areas are important and often interconnected but

seldom do we hear them discussed. I hope that we can change this.

 

Forgot to add that if you get caught fee splitting, it will depend upon your

licensing board and they could take your license or suspend it. Most likely the

other party will not be penalized, unless they also violated the IRS criteria

for independent contractors (unpaid taxes and penalties for such can add up) and

they could be closed down until they pay. Mike W. Bowser, L AcRecent Activity

8New Members

1New Links

Visit Your Group