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Payroll

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:

Plan for the inevitable: How to handle lost W-2s

03/06/2012

Employees call Payroll every year saying they’ve lost their W-2s. Dealing with such requests can become a time-consuming headache, especially for larger organizations. Here are some tips for managing the reissued W-2 process.

Form W-2c: the agony of errors

03/02/2012
The earlier employers fix errors on 2011 W-2s, the less likely it is they’ll be penalized by the IRS. E-filers have until the April 2 to file original W-2s, but even those few extra weeks may not be enough to get off the W-2c hook for mistakes that come to your attention after e-filing.

Spring forward! Daylight saving time begins March 11

03/01/2012
Daylight saving time begins at 2 a.m., March 11. Graveyard-shift workers, therefore, will work only seven hours that day. If you pay those employees for a standard eight-hour shift, don’t include the extra hour’s pay when calculating their regular rates to determine overtime.

New state wage theft act requires pay notices

02/22/2012

California’s Wage Theft Prevention Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, criminalizes willful violations for nonpayment of wages and sets civil penalties for failure to pay minimum wages. It also requires employers to provide employees with wage notices …

FTC clamps down on alleged payday lenders

02/22/2012
You may have seen the TV ads: An announcer says that if you need money and you have a job, up to $5,000 can be transferred into your bank account. The lender isn’t a payday lender, the ad continues. The FTC begs to differ. It has sued these lenders, claiming that they are, indeed, payday lenders, who didn’t go to court before they began issuing garnishment orders to borrowers’ employers.

IRS issues more guidance on health benefit W-2 reporting

02/22/2012
Beginning with 2012 W-2 forms, you must report the value of employees’ health benefits (Box 12, with Code DD). Reporting on Form W-3 isn’t ­necessary. Good news: Under new IRS guidance, W-2 reporting is excused in more instances.

Cruising: 2012 maximum car and SUV valuations set

02/20/2012
Employers that use the standard mileage rate to value employees’ personal use of company vehicles are restricted to supplying them with vehicles of modest value. For 2012, the value of company cars that qualify for the standard mileage valuation method is $15,900.

We didn’t withhold! How do we fix it?

02/19/2012
Q. A new employee was mistakenly paid through Accounts Payable for January, so no federal or state taxes were withheld from his pay. It’s still early in the year, so we’d like to take out the taxes that should have been withheld from later wage payments. But we don’t want to leave him with no net pay. According to our calculations, it should take us two months to withhold the additional taxes. Is this OK?