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Compensation & Benefits

2019 W-2s: No changes to reporting health benefits

10/21/2019
Use this chart to determine whether you must report health benefits on employees’ W-2s.

Employee returning from maternity leave: Does she have to have the same hours as before?

10/15/2019
Q. Under Texas law, if we have an employee returning from maternity leave, are we required to give her the same work hours as she received before her leave? We would like to reduce her hours because sales are down.

Survey: Most employers offer wellness benefits

10/15/2019
Employers are going beyond providing traditional health benefits to address employees’ well-being, finds a survey from the Robert Half staffing firm.

Snapshot: Who leads efforts to address pay inequality?

10/15/2019
CEOs and other senior executives lend credibility to employer efforts to ensure women and minorities earn equal pay, but HR leads the day-to-day work.

Average family health premiums now top $20,000

10/15/2019
Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose 5% to average $20,576 this year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s just-released 2019 Employer Health Benefits Survey.

DOL proposes new rule on tipped workers’ pay

10/10/2019
Employees who rely on tips for most of their income might have to do more work for less than the minimum wage under a proposed rule issued Oct. 7 by the Department of Labor.

Play by overtime rules or be prepared to pay

10/10/2019
Don’t try to game the system by making workers clock out and keep working, failing to record extra time worked or suggesting that the extra hours constitute “volunteer” work.

FICA wage base increases to $137,700 in 2020

10/10/2019
The Social Security Administration has announced that the 2020 taxable wage base for the Social Security portion of FICA increases to $137,700.

27% of adults have a pre-existing condition

10/10/2019
An analysis by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation finds that almost 54 million people—or 27% of all adults under age 65—have pre-existing health conditions that would likely have made them uninsurable in the individual markets that existed in most states before the Affordable Care Act.

If court scraps ACA, administration wants to delay law’s demise

10/10/2019
The Trump administration plans to seek a stay if the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals invalidates the Affordable Care Act when it issues a ruling in Texas v. Azar—a case in which the Justice Department advocated invalidating the ACA in its entirety.