Nike may have misclassified thousands of temporary office workers and faces potential tax fines of more than $530 million, according to documents obtained by The Guardian. The sporting goods company employs more than 79,000 people worldwide and, like many large corporations, also relies on an army of independent contractors to do work, including business consulting, T-shirt graphics, photography and event planning.

A July 2022 review of Nike’s independent contractors in the US, UK, Netherlands and Belgium concluded that the company faces a “misclassification risk” of more than $530 million. The report, compiled by People2.0, looked at 3,670 entities, independent contractors, law firms, individuals and others, in the US who had been paid over $7.2 billion over three years. It found that a quarter of those contractors may have been incorrectly classified. Those contractors received more than $1.2 billion in payments. Nike’s potential liability for those payments in the US alone totals $293.2 million, according to the report.

The report also found similarly large numbers of problematic payments to outside entities in the UK, Netherlands and Belgium and concluded that Nike faced potential fines of $53.7 million in the UK, $76.4 million in Netherlands and $106.8 million in Belgium, a total liability of over $530 million. “People2.0’s Risk Assessment has revealed a variety of practices and circumstances at Nike, which, in many cases, indicate a high risk of audit failure under the scrutiny of a taxing authority,” the report concluded.