Payroll

April 2015: Employer’s business tax calendar

03/31/2015

Here’s your monthly guide to critical payroll due dates.

Timely filing requires a USPS stamp of approval

03/27/2015

Why trudge down to the post office for stamps, lease a pricey postage machine or use a private delivery service like FedEx, when you can get the same postage by downloading software to your computer? There is a difference, according to the Tax Court, which ruled that a petition mailed with downloaded postage wasn’t timely filed.

DOL issues standards for locating missing employees

03/25/2015

The IRS and the Social Security Administration used to have letter forwarding services you could use to find employees who terminated with unclaimed wages or money in their 401(k) or other retirement accounts. Bowing to new technologies, both agencies discontinued their services. The Department of Labor has now specified the reasonable steps you must take to find missing 401(k) plan participants.

What goes in a proper wage statement?

03/23/2015

Q. During the last pay period, after my California employees received their paychecks, a few of them asked me where the wage statement was. What information am I required to include in this statement?

What ‘notice-of-pay’ must new hires receive?

03/23/2015

Q. I recently hired new warehouse employees. Is there any information regarding their wage payment that I must present to them?

Are Skyped meetings compensable?

03/19/2015

Q: Department managers conduct monthly meetings in person and via Skype for employees who are off, so they don’t have to come in and attend the meetings. Must we pay a minimum amount of hours?

Chart: Health care information reporting

03/18/2015

Make sure your health care information reporting duties are covered with this handy chart.

You can take it with you, but read this first, please

03/16/2015

Departing employees may take the pretax contributions they made into their 401(k) or 403(b) accounts with them when they leave, but you must first provide them with a notice of their rollover options. The IRS has updated the model safe-harbor notices you can use for this purpose.

The price for misclassifying workers? $83,051,159

03/12/2015

The Department of Labor is working diligently to determine whether you properly classify your workers as employees or independent contractors. And that’s not all the DOL is doing.

Do we have to pay overtime for hours an employee spent out on sick leave?

03/11/2015

Q. Last week, an employee was out sick on Monday but worked 40 hours Tuesday through Friday. She would like to use her sick leave for Monday and claim overtime for those Monday hours. Must I pay her overtime for those hours?