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Compensation & Benefits

Cash out or roll over PTO: What are the tax implications?

03/13/2012
Q. Employees who don’t use all of their paid time off (PTO) lose it at the end of the company’s fiscal year. Management wants to amend this policy to give employees the option of selling back their unused PTO days to the company at their current pay rates or rolling over the PTO days into the next year. Before Payroll gives its final OK to this plan, we’d like to know if we’re missing anything.

IRS sets rules for taxing damage awards

03/13/2012
Final IRS regulations exclude from taxpayers’ gross income damage awards for personal physical injuries or illness received from a lawsuit or in settlement of legal claims. The regs delete the requirement that to qualify for the tax exclusion, damages must be based on a tort or tort-type right.

Report: IRS correspondence audits need improvement

03/13/2012

The IRS recently announced that it has begun conducting correspondence audits of employers that took the 6.2% Social Security tax credit authorized by the 2010 Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has concluded that the audit program remains error-prone, and that those errors affect taxpayers’ rights.

Employee tried to comply? He may get unemployment

03/13/2012
The Court of Appeal of Florida has concluded that employees fired for poor attendance must have a chance to show they tried to comply with their employer’s attendance policies before they are denied unemployment compensation benefits.

When worker returns from FMLA leave, it’s OK to assign equivalent job at different location

03/13/2012

Employees who take FMLA leave are entitled to return to their job or to an equivalent one. If the FMLA absence necessitated hiring a replacement, there’s no obligation to remove or transfer the new hire—as long as the returning employee receives an equivalent position. That position can even include a transfer to a different location …

Retention bonus: Stay five years, get $50,000

03/13/2012
After realizing how much it spent training new ­employees, SIB Development and Consulting in Charleston, S.C., decided to launch a novel retention bonus: If you keep your job for five years, you get $50,000.

Loan repayments tax-free to some medical professionals

03/13/2012
Under the Affordable Care Act health care reform law, doctors and nurses whose student loans are forgiven under state programs that reward those who work in underserved areas don’t have income in the amount of the debt that’s forgiven.

Do-it-yourself pay audits may not be such a good idea

03/09/2012

Allowing wage-and-hour problems to fester can land you in hot water, which puts a premium on performing a self-audit of your company’s pay policies. But be aware that you may have to provide this so-called self-critical analysis to employees’ attorneys, should they sue you. Take these steps to minimize this possibility:

Austin’s HBMG agrees to repay diverted retirement funds

03/08/2012
Austin-based information technology firm HBMG and its president, Manuel Zarate, have agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging the company failed to transfer employee retirement fund contributions into its 401(k) program.

Minimum wage increase: not 2012, maybe 2013

03/08/2012
President Obama’s push to raise the minimum wage from its current $7.25 per hour to $9.50 will likely fall on deaf ears in Congress this year.