I don’t want to hire my crew members as full-time employees though – so why do I need a W-4, I-9, etc?

The short answer is: because the government says you need to. You may be accustomed to paying crew members as independent contractors, but there are a lot of reasons you shouldn’t. Did we mention we’re not labor attorneys? We are definitely not labor attorneys.

We’re also not the tax police. But TiM is for onboarding crewmembers the right way, and that means hiring them as employees, even if it’s short-term. Most likely you’ll be working with an employer-of-record payroll service, and they’ll require you to do all your onboarding by the book anyway.