Free Maine Independent Contractor Agreement Template

A Maine independent contractor agreement is a written contract engaging a self-employed worker for a defined job. It sets scope, payment, and termination rights. Uniquely, having such a contract is itself one of the criteria the state weighs when deciding whether someone truly qualifies as a contractor.

A Maine independent contractor agreement never goes to the state for filing or approval. Maine instead starts from a presumption: every person who works for pay counts as an employee, and the employing unit carries the burden of proving otherwise. The test sits in 39-A M.R.S. 102(13-A).

The Five Criteria Everyone Must Meet

All five of these must be true:

• The person has the essential right to control the means and progress of the work, except as to final results.
• The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business.
• The person has the opportunity for profit and loss as a result of the services performed.
• The person hires and pays their own assistants and, where those assistants are employees, supervises the details of their work.
• The person makes their services available to a client or customer community, even where that right goes voluntarily unexercised or temporarily restricted.

Three More From a List of Seven

Beyond those five, at least three of the following must also apply:

• A substantive investment in the facilities, tools, instruments, materials, and knowledge used to complete the work
• No requirement to work exclusively for the other individual or entity
• Responsibility for satisfactory completion, with contractual responsibility for failing to complete the work
• A contract defining the relationship and giving contractual rights where the other party terminates before completion
• Payment based on factors directly related to the work performed, rather than solely on time expended
• Work falling outside the usual course of the business the service is performed for
• A determination of independent contractor status by the Internal Revenue Service

No, and the Workers’ Compensation Board says so plainly. A worker and an employing unit cannot simply agree on contractor status, and issuing IRS Form 1099 does not settle it either. Where the parties contest a claim, an administrative law judge at the Board decides, weighing the facts as they stood when the injury occurred.

That said, the fourth item on the secondary list rewards a written contract that defines the relationship and sets out termination rights. So your agreement matters as evidence, not as a shortcut.

Maine lets a worker, rather than the hiring business, file a voluntary statement that shifts the starting point. Since 25 October 2023, the older predetermination application has been retired in favor of the Independent Contractor Statement.

1. Check the criteria first. Work through 39-A M.R.S. 102(13-A) honestly before filing anything.
2. File Form WCB-267. Submit it electronically to the Workers’ Compensation Board, the preferred route, or on paper.
3. Note the effective date. A statement takes effect when the Board receives it and cannot be backdated.
4. Diarize the expiry. It creates a rebuttable presumption for one year and does not renew automatically.
5. Verify it. The Board posts information about filed statements on its public website, so a hiring business can check.

One limit matters. The statement covers workers’ compensation only, and Maine’s Department of Labor will not accept it as evidence of contractor status for unemployment purposes.

A Maine independent contractor agreement should cover scope, fee, and schedule first. Because the state counts a defining contract among its criteria, add explicit termination rights setting out what each side owes where work stops early. Also state that the contractor supplies their own tools, hires their own assistants, and serves other clients. Close with ownership of work product and confidentiality.