>An employer who wants to treat someone as an independent contractor rather than an employee has to show that the work:

>is done without the direction and control of the employer; and

>is performed outside the usual course of the employer's business; and

>is done by someone who has their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work.

A gas station clerk or stocker is not an independent contractor. If his employer has filed him as one they’re commuting fraud to get away with paying their share of social security. You are right though if they did they probably didn’t withhold the proper taxes and the friend may owe some taxes (still probably unlikely though because a stocker at a gas station may not make enough).