Who is the employer of shared employees? How are hours of service credited?
Revenue Rulings 73-447 [1973-2 CB 135] and 67-101 [1967-1 CB 382] held that shared employees were full time employees of all parties sharing them. Both are pre-ERISA rulings, and as such, refer to Code provisions that are now obsolete. However, the logic of those Revenue Rulings is still valid. Before ERISA, coverage requirements were based on whether a worker was a full-time employee. (ERISA replaced this with the requirement of 1,000 hours of service.) The rulings analyzed a shared employee situation in this light and concluded that the employees were the full-time employees of both employers. As Rev. Rul. 73-447 declared: Whether the nurses are employed full-time with each corporation is not determined by the amount of services rendered to each. The amount of services rendered to each corporation may vary from day to day. Such variation does not, however, permit classifying the employees as part-time workers. The characteristics of an employee do not change when the efforts of such
