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Compensation & Benefits

Honest! You don’t have to sweat a tax audit anymore

08/29/2012
Ignoring the IRS won’t make a tax audit go away, advises a senior policy analyst at the IRS. In fact, the opposite is true—ignoring a notification of a payroll audit means that you give up your chance to tell your side of the story and set the record straight.

Payroll records: Know exempt, nonexempt timekeeping requirements

08/28/2012
Employers subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act must keep rec­­ords for both nonexempt and exempt employees. The regulations don’t say which types of record-keeping or time­­keeping methods you should use, but they do specify the necessary data you need to maintain on all employees. Here’s the guidance you need to stay in compliance.

Balance due on your 2011 Form 940? Maybe not

08/27/2012
Credit-reduction states are listed on Schedule A of the 2011 Form 940. If you do business in one of those 20 states, and you receive a balance-due notice from the IRS, don’t despair.

Prepare now for the ‘fiscal cliff’ that looms Jan. 1

08/27/2012
Unless Congress acts soon, the end of this year will see the expiration of an unprecedented number of tax provisions. That could cause havoc with your Payroll operations, as the IRS will be forced to delay issuing the 2013 tax tables and, critically, the 2013 withholding tables.

Pennsylvania recognizes workers who help cut state costs

08/27/2012

Pennsylvania state officials are en­­couraging government employees to figure out ways to spend less money and work more efficiently. Gov. Tom Corbett put out the call for “innovation initiatives” in March, and so far, 130 are in progress.

How to change pay scales without triggering age bias suits

08/24/2012
If you are contemplating changing your compensation structure to re­­flect today’s lean job market, do so carefully—especially if you suspect you may be overpaying some senior employees for the work they do.

Can we legally cap paid sick leave?

08/23/2012

Q. One of our managers has medical problems and has used a significant amount of paid sick leave. Because we don’t have a defined sick pay policy, this manager uses paid sick time whenever she’s out (full day or half day). How can we legally cap this? Is developing a policy with specific hours our only alternative?

Philadelphia issues regs on mandatory paid sick leave

08/23/2012
Philadelphia employers that do business with the city had to begin providing paid sick leave to their employees on July 1, when new provisions of the city’s “21st Century Minimum Wage Standard” went into effect.

Track discipline in a way that allows easy recall

08/23/2012
You will never know which employee will sue or for what reason. That’s a good reason to carefully track all discipline and make the records easy to access.

For unemployment, there’s stupid, then there’s willful

08/23/2012

Employees are typically ineligible for unemployment benefits if they were fired for creating a hostile work environment. That usually amounts to willful misconduct, which disqualifies them from collecting unemployment. But not every crude or stupid action is serious enough to bar benefits, as this case shows.