According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google
I'm always amazed, when the-tax-system-sucks posts come up on HN, how quickly most commenters are to trash the author and/or lecture the complainer on how wrong they are.There is a impedance mismatch at work in our system of governance that's not going away any time soon. The government makes laws by sticking people into little boxes and making rules for those boxes. This system of boxes and rules -- the tax code -- is becoming more and more removed from reality by the day.You make 10K a year selling things at yard sale, nobody is the wiser. You make 10K selling pot, nobody is the wiser. You make 10K by putting little bits on a server somewhere, you're a business. Why? Because Google can report you, that's why.You buy socks from Amazon from a house in one state, you have to pay taxes. Buy the same socks from another state, pay no taxes. Order overseas, no taxes no matter which state you are in.In fact all of these are businesses -- or none of them are. It's like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have this word "business" which has some kind of vague meaning, so we attach a bunch of rules to the abstraction.We have a 1900s view of how things work that we are desperately trying to take a hammer and pound into a 21st century reality.In point of fact, the economy works because people are constantly adapting to new circumstances, trying to do the best they can. As the rules get more and more complex, more and more people will end up being quite surprised at the situation they end up in.Personally I think the system is broken beyond repair -- too many politicians are  architecture astronauts -- but however it turns out, I have immense sympathy for the author of this article.