If you in good conscience meet the criteria for claiming "exempt", be my guest. But it's not a silver bullet.
If you are exchanging labor for pay, what matters in terms of federal nexus is when your payor informs the feds of what they paid you and what category the payment falls in. The W-2 form boxes 1, 3, and 5 indicate that they paid you a certain amount and they testify under oath that they believe this constitutes "wages" under three different definitions in chapters 21, 23, and 24 of the tax code. Well, if that testimony is correct, well and good, but you might want to find out what people do who determine that they've received a W-2 with incorrect testimony just in case; there is a standard process for correcting testimony if it is inaccurate. This won't be important for awhile, but unrebutted incorrect testimony has a way of eventually hurting a person, just like it hurt Trump last week.
If you in good conscience meet the criteria for claiming "exempt", be my guest. But it's not a silver bullet.
If you are exchanging labor for pay, what matters in terms of federal nexus is when your payor informs the feds of what they paid you and what category the payment falls in. The W-2 form boxes 1, 3, and 5 indicate that they paid you a certain amount and they testify under oath that they believe this constitutes "wages" under three different definitions in chapters 21, 23, and 24 of the tax code. Well, if that testimony is correct, well and good, but you might want to find out what people do who determine that they've received a W-2 with incorrect testimony just in case; there is a standard process for correcting testimony if it is inaccurate. This won't be important for awhile, but unrebutted incorrect testimony has a way of eventually hurting a person, just like it hurt Trump last week.