Amazon Must Pay Wisconsin Jobless Benefit Tax for Gig Workers

Amazon Logistics Inc. must pay unemployment insurance taxes for more than 1,000 Wisconsin delivery drivers despite claiming that these gig workers aren’t classified as employees.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld a $200,000 tax penalty against the “The Everything Store” company Thursday in a ruling that could strengthen the state’s ability to extract jobless benefit taxes from delivery giants in an increasingly internet-retail-driven world.

Under Wisconsin labor laws, an independent contractor in other contexts often still qualifies as an employee for unemployment insurance. That issue is routinely litigated in agency hearings and court appeals in Wisconsin—the state with the nation’s ...