[ownagefool]

Not that it applies to you, but the right to subcontract in the UK is one of the primary checks for wether a contract is considered disgused employment.

The checks are Substitution, Direction and Control, and strong clauses in these will protect both the client and the contractor from a nasty tax bill.

[mikeryan]

In the US its way more fuzzy and generally in a way that's not usually covered in a contracting agreement.

[kemitchell]

The issue comes up under several kinds of state and federal law. All of the inquiries are pretty fuzzy. None of them turn on what contracts say, but rather the facts of the working situation.

Most US lawyers advise reciting independent-contractor status, anyway. Some forms include obligations to comply with tax laws in accordance with that characterization. Some go even further, and have contractor indemnify client for wage, benefit, and other reclassification-related claims by putative subs.

Where reclassification is particularly risky, lawyers will often include recitals that go to the relevant factors, like independence, self-direction, use of own equipment, and so on. Intuition says that language may be stronger when they it speaks in terms of the specific work to be done, rather than generic features of a generic independent-contractor agreement.