Infosys will pay $8,00,000 to California over foreign worker’s visas, tax fraud

California
has settled with an India-based technology company that it accuses of
misclassifying foreign workers and related tax fraud, the state attorney
general’s office said on Tuesday.

Infosys
Limited, a business consulting, information technology and outsourcing company,
and its subsidiary, Infosys BPM Limited, will pay California $800,000.

The company
brought in workers using the wrong visas to underpay them and avoid paying
California payroll taxes such as unemployment insurance, disability insurance
and employment training taxes, Attorney General Xavier Becerra said.

About 500 Infosys employees were working in California on company-sponsored B-1 visas rather than H-1B visas from 2006 and 2017, the state said.

Aside from paying state taxes, H-1B visas also require employers to pay workers the local holding wage and can be challenging to obtain because there are a limited number available each year.

The company
has annual revenue of $11 billion, and Becerra said the settlement covers
California’s losses.