I was never aware of this but I also never freelanced. That's horrible that there is no structure in place for the different income levels.
The laws may be different in your state. I was in a group of citizens who protested years ago after something happened that let us know we were classified as businesses and we all owed three years' back taxes plus interest and penalties. Some people were charged more than the income they were taxed on. It wasn't just this city, but also some others in California. Here, some of us met with our City Council member and reps of the other departments involved, for example. As part of this effort, I spent a lot of time looking up laws. One highly relevant fact I found was that there's no universal definition of "business." I was thinking, hey, a real business has its own bank account and its own phone number, I'm just one person working. But that doesn't count officially.
We did get some concessions, but no change to the idea of what a business is, as embodied in the ordinance, and this was the root of the problem. Then something else happened that made things worse again. (I'm leaving out a lot of information.) A structure is in place for different income levels. It's a faulty structure, though, from the point of view of fairness.
Yes, I want a change

