Full implementation of the Affordable Care Act health care reform law is mere months away, which means that the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services have a lot of work to do in a short period of time. The latest regulations cover the 90-day waiting period for new employees and temporary reinsurance fees.

The IRS has confirmed that how you withhold income taxes from supplemental pay, such as bonuses—by using a flat withholding method or aggregating the supplemental pay with other wages—is entirely up to you; employees can’t specify a withholding method.

Employees in the National Guard and Reserve usually serve their two weeks during the summer, but others may be away longer. Here’s what Payroll needs to know to properly handle summer military duty.

State law controls the age at which teens must obtain age certificates, working papers or parental consent letters and how long you must retain those documents. To help you get a handle on this crucial paperwork requirement, here's a chart summarizing the state laws.

When summer rolls around, Payroll often takes on a parental role, initiating summer hires into adulthood as they pay taxes for the first time. Make sure your processes are in order so that the summer hiring process runs smoothly.

It’s summertime soon, and the Payroll living is anything but easy. Every employee wants off at the same time (not gonna happen!). Unpaid interns flood the office ... Here’s what you need to know to keep Payroll running smoothly this summer.

If you have employees who are getting hitched soon, help them start married life right by getting their HR documents in order. The problem: Brides who take their husbands’ names and couples with hyphenated names suddenly don’t match a host of records.

In Minnesota, employees are supposed to be paid promptly and receive an accounting of their time worked. Failure to comply may mean you’ll have to pay a penalty.

Q: An employee has asked if she can continue to make pretax contributions into her 401(k) plan even after her compensation reaches the annual salary limit of $255,000. Our benefits department has never encountered this question before. Can she do so?

Q: One of our employees died. Our HR manager would like to allow employees to donate their vacation time to the family and she’s asked Payroll for some guidelines. What can we tell her?

Question: We recently acquired a new company. Our payroll system kicked out an acquired employee’s W-4 form. He claims single status-99 with an additional 20% on his form. This W-4 seems contrary to wording on the W-4 itself. What do we tell him?

The bottom line for you to avoid free-rider penalties under the Affordable Care Act is not to have employees obtain health insurance on the individual exchange and qualify for premium tax credits or other cost sharing reductions.

Q. After several large health insurance claims last year, our president decided to increase the premiums deducted from employees’ paychecks. However, the rate he has directed to be deducted is higher than the rate at which we are billed for the spouse and dependent coverage. Is it legal to make money off of the “premiums” we ask em­­ployees to pay?

The Texas chapter of the AFL-CIO is opposing a bill introduced in the state House of Representatives that would criminalize payroll deductions for contributions to political action committees.

The automatic federal budget cuts that took effect on March 1, known as the sequester, reduce the refundable portion of 501(c) tax-exempt organizations’ health care tax credit by 8.7%, according to the IRS.