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Compensation & Benefits

Bye-bye, so long, farewell: What to do with terminated employees’ 401(k) assets

01/30/2025
You have a fiduciary duty to at least try to locate employees who left their 401(k) plan assets behind when they terminated. The IRS and the DOL list measures that will satisfy this fiduciary duty, but what if you take any or all of those steps and still draw a blank?

The catch with the IRS’ proposed catch-up contributions regs

01/27/2025
Proposed regulations implementing SECURE 2.0’s requirement that employees earning more than $145,000 (as adjusted for inflation) make catch-up contributions on a Roth, after-tax basis come loaded with warnings and extra payroll responsibilities.

Create guardrails to make unlimited paid leave work

01/27/2025
In theory, the idea of offering employees unlimited leave should be a great incentive to encourage retention. Who would want to give up unlimited leave for a paltry one or two weeks of vacation and a bit of sick leave? As is often the case, the devil is in the details when it comes to unlimited paid-time-off benefits.

New DOL opinion letter tackles garnishment

01/24/2025
A new opinion letter from the Department of Labor has clarified how employers must calculate wages from which garnishment deductions are made. The letter explains that employers must not include tuition reimbursements in wages subject to garnishment.

With employees ambivalent about bonuses, consider boosting benefits instead

01/23/2025
Make no mistake, employees like bonuses—55% of respondents to a survey by the Agital marketing agency said annual bonuses improve their level of job satisfaction. They just like other things more.

In the Payroll Mailbag: February ’25

01/23/2025
Tax-free business meals or taxable working lunch? … Are rent subsidies tax-free?

Experimental treatments are covered under the FMLA

01/23/2025
The Department of Labor has concluded in a letter to a medical organization that FMLA-covered leave taken by an employee with a serious health condition includes leave to participate in an experimental medical treatment.

Employer group not tax-exempt—employee discounts are taxable

01/23/2025
Small employers can band together for such laudable purposes as holding blood drives, flu-shot clinics or holiday toy drives. But there are limits to what a group of employers can do if it seeks tax-exempt status.

‘Sorry’ is easy to say and hard to correct

01/23/2025
Sorry, but no one told you a remote employee moved to another state, so you just kept withholding for the employee’s old state. This employee just received a W-2 reporting wages for the wrong state. How do you fix this? Is it fixable at all?

Et tu, reissued W-2s?

01/23/2025
If Payroll could fire bad employees, those who routinely lose their W-2s, refuse to have anything to do with your employee self-service portal and call for replacements at the last minute would be sacked in a heartbeat. Instead, you need a foolproof strategy to deal with reissued W-2s.