The Social Security trust fund will run out of money by late 2032, according to the annual report the program issued last month. The specific date is new — last year’s report projected insolvency by early 2033 — but the overall trend is not: Social Security’s long-run imbalance was first projected in 1985. Even for Congress, ignoring 41 years of warnings about a problem that is both consequential and easy to fix is breathtaking.

It is also puzzling. Americans are not divided about Social Security or how to move forward: 85% would rather see a tax increase than a benefit cut. The most popular policy by far is eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes, which are not collected on earnings above $184,500, followed by a marginal rate increase to the payroll tax. These two changes alone would cover 87% of the 75-year shortfall, more if the tax contributions above the current cap are not credited with higher benefits.

See? I told you it was easy to fix. The harder policy conversation is about how to expand and strengthen the program. Social Security is far from perfect — and the self-employed illustrate why. One way to improve the program: Social Security ought to change its tax treatment of self-employment and start taxing the employers of independent contractors.

Self-employed individuals were left out of the 1935 legislation but brought into coverage in the amendments of 1950. The tax structure of Social Security doesn’t neatly apply to them. For payroll employees, the Social Security tax is split evenly between workers and their employers; each puts in 6.2%. How much should a worker put in if they are their own employer?

Initially, Congress split the difference — they paid a rate higher than the workers’ tax but lower than the combined worker-employer tax. In 1983, Congress raised the rate to be on par with the combined worker-employer tax. In a concession to how burdensome this would be, Congress also created an income tax deduction for the Social Security taxes paid by the self-employed.

That concession is no longer enough, if it ever was. The self-employment tax is still very problematic. For one, it makes self-employment — which is critical for a lot of business startups — more expensive. For another, it creates an incentive for the self-employed to underreport their income in order to lower their tax burden. There’s evidence that’s that exactly what they do, to the tune of billions of lost tax revenue each year. And since Social Security benefits are progressive, underreported income can both lower benefits for the individual and be relatively more expensive to Social Security.

But one of the worst aspects of the self-employment tax is that it adds to the financial incentive for firms to prefer contractors over employees. There is even a name for this phenomenon: It’s called “misclassification,” when workers who should be payroll employees — and subject to payroll taxes and protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act — are instead contractors.

The Department of Labor has issued rules to reduce misclassification, but enforcement is weak. It’s also difficult to stop the momentum of a trend. According to a 2017 report from the Treasury Department, the growth in self-employment since 2001 came mostly from contractors and misclassification.

The good news is that this isn’t hard. Social Security needs money. The economy needs new businesses. Employers need fewer temptations to misclassify. So levy a new tax for Social Security on employers with independent contractors. Think of it as a “1099 tax” or a “1099 fee,” after the tax form that contractors file instead of an employee’s W-2.

How would such a tax work? One way would just be to set a rate based on the total compensation paid. So if a firm issued $100,000 in 1099 income, it would pay 6.2% on it. Another would be to structure it like a user fee, and set a sliding scale based on the number of 1099s issued; the fee would be lower for firms that use relatively fewer contractors, and higher for those that use relatively more — and some companies use tens or even hundreds of thousands. Or the system could be a combination of these approaches.

Each system has downsides; the first example would give companies an incentive to pay contractors less, while the second gives them an incentive to use contractors less. In the case of the former, if self-employed workers no longer have to pay the employer’s portion of the Social Security tax, they aren’t necessarily worse off. In the latter, the idea is that a reduced demand for contractors would increase demand for employees.

Of course, the Ubers and DoorDashes and TaskRabbits of the world would probably hate this, and anyone who proposes it risks being branded a communist who wants to kill American innovation. (I get email.) But these online gig platforms don’t pay into Social Security for the millions of workers — sorry, partners — they rely on to run their business, while every other employer does. That’s not fair to either workers or other companies.

Part of what makes Social Security so enduringly popular is its fairness and simplicity: Do you work? You pay in. Do you have workers? You pay in. How people work and how they are employed can change, but the principles behind Social Security don’t.

The across-the-board benefit cut that comes at the depletion of the trust fund is basically a forcing mechanism for Congress to act. A 1099 fee would be a way for Congress to extend that fairness and simplicity to the gig economy.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Kathryn Anne Edwards is a labor economist, independent policy consultant and co-host of the Optimist Economy podcast.

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