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Compensation & Benefits

Family-coverage health premiums up 5.4% this year

06/17/2014
Employer-provided health insurance for a family of four now costs $23,215, according to a new report by the actuarial firm Milliman. This can be seen as both good and bad news.

Are business owners exempt from payroll taxes?

06/17/2014

Q: We process payroll for several companies. A new client says that company owners are exempt from all payroll taxes. Is there some law out there that we don’t know about?

Should we be paying for the trip from our home office to the work site?

06/16/2014
Q. One of our work crews needs to drive to a single work site during the day. One employee drives a truck and trailer with tools and equipment from our main facility. We would like to allow other employees to save gas by riding in the company’s truck. Do we need to pay employees for this commute time?

Hibachi Buffet carves out settlement in wage suit

06/16/2014
A U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation has found that the Hibachi Buffet restaurant in Minneapolis owes 18 employees a total of $117,000 in unpaid wages.

Unintentional misconduct doesn’t block unemployment

06/16/2014
Employees who are fired for misconduct aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits. But an unintentional mistake doesn’t block benefits.

Feds cut off future work for North Woods, Minn. contractor

06/16/2014
Garcia Forest Service finds itself barred from doing any more federal contract work after Uncle Sam found that it was cutting more than trees while performing forestry services in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota.

Hot Payroll fun this summer

06/16/2014
Performing general Payroll maintenance tasks is essential for your day-to-day operations. It’s also the key to a successful year end. Get started now!

W-2 or 1099 for former employee still receiving pay?

06/13/2014
Q: We have an agreement with a former employee to continue to pay him quarterly bonuses for clients he referred to us. Can we issue him a Form 1099-MISC or are the payments considered wages, which must be reported on a Form W-2?

Pay tops job security as #1 reason for job satisfaction

06/13/2014
For the first time since the pre-recession year of 2007, U.S. employees say compensation is now their No. 1 contributor to their job satisfaction, according to an annual Society for Human Resource Management survey.

State laws on same-sex marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships

06/12/2014
State bans on same-sex marriage continue to be challenged in court. Here’s a chart to help you make sense of where states currently stand in this fast-changing area of the law.