Hey Sharon! You’d want to negotiate a lease agreement with the owner. What is or is not included will depend on what that document ultimately says when the two of you finalize it. I highly recommend reading all the posts I’ve written here about booth rental and what it means for you moving forward. You may or may not be willing to pursue it after realizing what’s involved and how risky it can be.

Not at all. Read this post.

Hi Tina,
I am going through a similar situation. I had to purchase an area renters license and liability insurance but… I was there the hours she wanted me there, I couldn’t dictate what I charged. I was commission based and she was taking 60% and I was getting 40% of my services. I started out working 5 days and then she dicided it was best to reduce my days down to 2 and half days. That’s not what I really wanted to do. She also took monies for back bar and color usage. I gave her my notice because I couldn’t survive on what I was making. She tried to make me feel bad about leaving and that she was trying to help me. She took my clients color cards and she took my area renters license and would not give it back to me. Is that legal?

Nothing about this is legal. I recommend you read this post, this post, and this one.

You can bring it up if you’d like, but how the landlord does business with other tenants isn’t your business or concern. She likely charges her less because she only rents those units those two days. If you do bring it up, prepare for that conversation to get ugly. just as she has no right to question your business practices, you have no right to question hers.

I actually have written about this a few times (but it may not be categorized appropriately, which is why you didn’t find it, lol). In my Know Your Rights post and in my 20 Factors post, I talk about the difference between self-employed professionals and the rights they have. (I also talk about it in this post about employment classification, in this one about booth rental, and in a few others about the atrocity that is booth rental, lol.)

Here are your answers:
1.) You need a flat rental rate–not a percentage of gross sales. You’re getting screwed at 40%. (Self-employment tax is 15.3% just for federal, plus your state income tax. All that is coming out of your pocket.)
2.) She can’t be supplying products for you. That’s completely inappropriate. You use what you want. You are a tenant and she is a landlord. She can’t tell you how to run your business or what to use.
3.) You’re reporting sales to her and providing a percentage, which is an extremely inappropriate degree of control. This is also why she’s trying to dictate your schedules. The more you’re there, the more you make, which directly affects her rental income. That’s why the commission in lieu of flat rent is inappropriate. It gives her incentive to control you beyond what is acceptable.
4.) Is the way she’s operating legal? Here’s my obligatory “I’m not a lawyer” statement, but my assessment is no–she isn’t. The laws are very clear and she’s obviously not in compliance.

Inform her that her accountant’s opinion isn’t worth shit unless her accountant is an attorney with a specialization in labor law. You read this post so you already know what that statement means–she’s either lying or she’s relying on someone not qualified to advise her. If she’s so convinced it’s legal, then she’ll have no problem with you guys calling the labor board for clarification, right? Drop that line and see how she reacts. Her response will be pretty telling, I can promise you, lol. It’s likely that she is making common mistakes, but there’s no reason you should be at a disadvantage on account of her ignorance.