About P.A.C.E.

P.A.C.E. Credo

• "The ONLY legitimate purpose of business is to promote the common good through commerce." ~ James R. Ziegler, Ph.D.

History of P.A.C.E.

• The Professional Association for Contract Employment (P.A.C.E. for short) was founded in 1998 as an inexpensive, yet benefits-rich, alternative to the traditional staffing vendor business model.
  
  
• The P.A.C.E. business model is an unqualified success, and in September 2002 The San Francisco Business Times listed P.A.C.E. as the fourth fastest growing private company in the San Francisco Bay Area based on audited financials for the years 2000 and 2001.
  
  
• P.A.C.E. provides back-office support, executive-level employee benefits, contracts administration and contingent workforce compliance for self-employed persons, small business owners, consultants, employers, progressive staffing vendors and government agencies nationwide.
  
  
• P.A.C.E. calls its service “Solo W-2™” to reflect how the service converts the 1099 gross revenues generated by independent professionals into W-2 net wages, and in the process delivers tax-advantaged employment, guarantee-issue group insurance, a generous Roth 401(k) plan, simplified tax reporting, and IRS Form W-2 at the end of the year.
  
  
• P.A.C.E. corporate offices are in Concord, CA.

   

The Rationale for P.A.C.E.

• Historically, and especially since 1986 when the IRS severely tightened its requirements for independent contractor status, companies have relied on traditional staffing vendors (recruiting firms, temp agencies, etc.) to employ their contingent workers, process their payroll, withhold and pay applicable payroll and income taxes, and issue a W-2 for the workers at the end of the year.
  
  
• Traditional staffing vendors have high operating costs stemming from their role as recruiters and suppliers of temporary labor. High overhead costs require high gross margins, which result in high fees for the companies that use their temporary help services and lower wages for the contingent workers who they supply to those companies.
  
  
• Also, because employment through a traditional staffing vendor is typically temporary, there is little incentive for staffing vendors to offer employee benefits that are in any way comparable to the benefits packages that large companies give to their own regular employees.

   

The P.A.C.E. Difference

• P.A.C.E. does not recruit temporary workers, but rather focuses on providing back-office support and benefits-rich employment for independent professionals, including:
  
  
  • Self-employed persons.
  • Small business owners.
  • Freelancers.
  • Consultants.
    
    
• Independent professionals typically join P.A.C.E. for one of the following three reasons:
  
  
  • To convert 1099 revenues from their sole proprietorship or registered small business (corporation or limited liability company) to W-2 net wage and in the process receive tax-advantaged employment, guarantee-issue group insurance, a generous Roth 401(k) plan, simplified tax reporting, and IRS Form W-2 at the end of the year.
    
    
  • To operate as "do-it-yourself consultants" and use P.A.C.E. as an umbrella for contract review and negotiations, contract administration, timely invoicing, assertive collections, payroll processing and access to superb employee benefits.
    
    
  • Or because they were referred to P.A.C.E. by an organization that sources their own contingent talent internally and is seeking highly effective, yet inexpensive, contingent workforce compliance and co-employment risk mitigation.

   

P.A.C.E. Services for Independent Professionals

• Solo W-2™ Basic Employment Services
  
  
  • P.A.C.E. Solo W-2™ Basic is a benefits-rich, national employment platform that gives self-employed persons, small business owners, freelancers and consultants access to executive-level employee benefits.
    
    
  • P.A.C.E. operates as the individual's second employer solely for the purpose of payroll processing and benefits administration.
    
    
  • P.A.C.E. issues IRS Form W-2 at year-end.
    
    
• Solo W-2™ Premium Employment Services
  
  
  • P.A.C.E. Solo W-2™ Premium Employment is a comprehensive employer of record service for independent consultants who are required by their client to be employed by a third-party employer of record and/or who appreciate the back-office support, convenience, cost savings, and tax-advantaged earnings that are available only through Solo W-2™.
    
    
  • Premium Employment Services include the Basic Employment services plus Contract Review and Negotiation, Online Time and Expense Reporting, Timely Invoicing and Assertive Collections of Accounts Receivables.
    
    
  • P.A.C.E. issues IRS Form W-2 at year-end.

   

P.A.C.E. Services for Companies

• Mitigation of Co-employment Risks
  P.A.C.E. assesses the company's contingent workforce for compliance with established government standards for worker status and takes appropriate action to:
  
  
  • Mitigate the risk that the IRS or another government agency might reclassify the company's contract workers as employees of the company, resulting in expensive claims for back taxes, penalties and interest.
    
    
  • Eliminate exposure to unemployment claims, workers compensation claims and general liability claims against the company by contract workers.
    
    
  • Reduce the incidence of class-action lawsuits by non-compliant independent contractors, who might otherwise make a claim against the company for employee benefits by asserting that they were de facto employees of the company.
    
    
• Compliance Testing and Certification of Independent Contractors.
  P.A.C.E. assesses internally sourced independent contractors for compliance with government standards and selects the most appropriate method for mitigation of co-employment risk. P.A.C.E. certifies IRS-compliant independent contractors and serves as their agent of record while working on projects for their clients. P.A.C.E. employs non-compliant contract workers and serves as their employer of record.
  
  
• Contractor Payment Services
  P.A.C.E. offers convenient Contractor Payment Processing for highly compensated Individual Service Providers and Small Business Contractors engaged by businesses and government agencies on domestic and international projects. Services include fast and efficient deployment, background checks, online time and expense reporting, consolidated invoicing and custom reporting.
  
  
• Cost Containment
  P.A.C.E. reduces the cost of engaging contingent workers by at least 20-30% compared with traditional staffing vendors. P.A.C.E. charges a modest, fixed price on top of the contractor’s total invoiced cost of labor. The organization determines the cost per labor unit or task for the work to be performed, independently of P.A.C.E., so there are no surprises.

   

P.A.C.E. Services for Progressive Staffing Vendors

• Full Back-office Support
  P.A.C.E. provides full back-office support to progressive staffing vendors, freeing them to do what they do best: recruit and supply talented professionals to their clients. Back-office support includes:
  
  
  • Time and expense reporting.
    
    
  • Accurate invoicing and assertive collections.
    
    
  • Full payroll services.
    
    
  • Superb employee benefits package.

   

P.A.C.E. Services for Small Business Owners

• Competitive Employee Benefits Package
  P.A.C.E. benefits-rich employment helps small business owners and start-ups attract and retain exceptional talent they might otherwise lose to the competition.

Vision Statement

• We recognize two driving service goals:
  
  
  • We will do our best, and we will be the best, at whatever we do.
    
    
  • We will continually improve so that our best gets ever better.

   

Mission Statement

• P.A.C.E. delivers extraordinary back-office support for entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers, consultants and the organizations that engage their services.

Core Values

• We recognize in our personal and professional lives a commitment to the following core values:
  
  
  • Critical thinking, including ideas and actions that are at all times both rational and ethical;
    
    
  • Fair mindedness;
    
    
  • Empathy with others and with other points of view;
    
    
  • Lifelong learning; and
    
    
  • Greatness, as exemplified in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.

   

Goal

• Be the most respected employer of, and advocate for, Independent Professionals in the United States, if not in the world.

About the Founder

• James R. Ziegler, PhD is the founder and Executive Director of P.A.C.E.

• He was born and raised in Fresno, CA, from which he escaped in 1966 to study theoretical population biology and evolutionary ecology at the University of Chicago. In the pursuit of his studies, Dr. Ziegler spent the summer of 1975 in northern Italy where he and an Italian colleague, Francesco Scudo, assembled and translated into English the seminal papers in mathematical ecology, which were originally published in Russian, German, French and Italian between the First and Second World Wars. Springer-Verlag published the translated papers in 1978 as Volume 22, Lecture Notes in Mathematical Biology, The Golden Age of Theoretical Ecology: 1923 – 1940.

• You might ask, “What is the connection between theoretical ecology and business processes?” The answer might surprise you. As a young economist at the University of Chicago in the 1930s, Paul Samuelson studied the early papers coming out of Europe that described the growth and interactions of species in nature.

• Dr. Samuelson was notably influenced by the original version of the anchor paper in The Golden Age of Theoretical Ecology: “Variazioni e Fluttuazioni del Numero d’Individui in Specie Animali Conviventi” by the famous Italian mathematician and statesman, Vito Volterra. Samuelson repurposed the mathematical equations in these papers to create the entirely new field of Econometrics, a feat for which he received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970.
  
  
• As it turns out, competition among businesses is similar to competition among species, and the relationships between consumers of goods and the producers of those goods are fundamentally equivalent in mathematical terms to the relationships between predators and their prey.
  
  
• Aside from the difference in context, there is little difference between a food chain, in which energy and nutrients pass up the food chain, and a supply chain, in which added value and system components pass up the supply chain.
  
  
• “Population growth and investment growth, nutrient flow and cash flow, extinction and bankruptcy are pairs of fundamentally equivalent concepts,” explains Dr. Ziegler. “Economics is the Ecology of business systems just as Ecology is the Economics of natural systems.”
  
  
• In creating the P.A.C.E. Solo W-2™ business model, Dr. Ziegler has applied fundamental equivalencies found in the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the IRS Code to produce a unique business model that redefines the very meaning of “self-employment.”

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