Vision Payroll

Thursday, November 27, 2008 will be Thanksgiving Day, a federal holiday. The offices of Vision Payroll will close Thanksgiving Eve, November 26 at 3 pm and re-open Friday November 28. Most banks will also be closed in observance of the holiday. Payrolls dated November 27 will be paid November 26 unless a previous change in schedule has been submitted. Payroll changes and hours must be submitted before the processing deadline on November 24. For payrolls dated November 28, payroll changes and hours must be submitted before the processing deadline on November 25. For payrolls dated December 1, payroll changes and hours must be submitted before the processing deadline on November 26. Payrolls submitted after these processing deadlines will be pushed back until the next available processing day. No changes are required for payrolls dated December 2. There will be no UPS ground delivery on November 27 or November 28, so we strongly recommend submitting payrolls during this time as early as practicable. Contact Vision Payroll as soon as possible to make changes to or for questions on your processing schedule.

The office of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has cited a Whitinsville, Massachusetts McDonald’s franchise for child labor law violations. After receiving complaints, auditors found that 16 and 17-year olds were working between the hours of midnight and 6 am and working more than 9 hours in a single day, both in violation of Massachusetts General Laws, c.149. There are other limitations on employing children under 18 and further restrictions on employing children under 16. We strongly recommend that you contact your labor attorney if you employ minors to ensure compliance with your state’s child labor laws.

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1% to 6.5%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported recently. October’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 127,000 in August and 284,000 in September, as revised. Employment has fallen by 1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease has occurred in the past 3 months. In October, job losses continued in manufacturing, construction, and several service-providing industries. Health care and mining continued to add jobs.

The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 6.5 percent in October, and the number of unemployed persons increased by 603,000 to 10.1 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 2.8 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.7 percentage points.

The unemployment rates for adult men (6.3%), adult women (5.3%), whites (5.9%), and Hispanics (8.8%) rose in October. The jobless rates for teenagers (20.6%) and blacks (11.1%) were little changed. The unemployment rate for Asians in October was 3.8%, not seasonally adjusted.

Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their job and did not expect to be recalled to work rose by 615,000 to 4.4 million in October. Over the past 12 months, the size of this group has increased by 1.7 million.

In October, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 249,000 to 2.3 million. The long-term unemployed accounted for 22.3% of total unemployment. The newly unemployed—those who were jobless fewer than 5 weeks—increased by 212,000 to 3.1 million in October.

This week’s question comes from Luna, a business owner: I have employees who bicycle to work; can I reimburse them for their costs? Answer: §132(f) of the Internal Revenue Code has been amended by §211 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (Public Law 110-343 or the “bailout bill”) so that effective with tax years beginning after December 31, 2008, employers may reimburse employees who “regularly [use] the bicycle for a substantial portion of the travel between [their] residence and place of employment” as long as the employee does not receive any other “qualified transportation fringe”. Costs to be reimbursed include “purchase of a bicycle and bicycle improvements, repair, and storage”. The limitation is $20 per month multiplied by the number of qualified commuting months. Contact Vision Payroll if you have any question on reimbursements for any qualified transportation fringe benefit.

According to the US Department of Labor, in the week ending November 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 481,000, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 485,000. The 4-week moving average was 477,000, unchanged from the previous week’s revised average of 477,000.

Are you ready to make a higher contribution to your retirement plan in 2009? Did your company establish an HSA and you’re not sure how much you can put away? Do you need to know the maximum Social Security tax that can be withheld? The election results are in and so are most of the 2009 inflation adjustments for payroll facts and figures. We’ve collected what you’ll need and added them to our 2007 and 2008 presentation and now you can get them all in one place. Click Tutorials, then Important Facts and Figures. We’ll update them as needed so you can always visit VisionPayroll.com when you need the latest results.

Vermont Governor James H. Douglas announced recently that pursuant to Title 21 of the Vermont Statutes, Annotated §384, the minimum wage for the state of Vermont will increase to $8.06 per hour effective January 1, 2009. The law requires an adjustment to the minimum wage be calculated each year. The adjustment is tied to the change in the federal Consumer Price Index, US city average, not seasonally adjusted (CPI-U) for the 12 months ending in August and cannot increase more than five percent per year. The 5.4% increase in the CPI-U will result in an increase of the statutory maximum of five percent or $0.38 for 2009. Contact Vision Payroll if you have any questions on the Vermont minimum wage increase or visit our Minimum Wage Chart.

California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr. recently filed suit against three trucking companies alleging that the companies improperly classified their employees as independent contractors. The suits filed against Guasimal Trucking, LLC, Noel A. Moreno and Emma R. Moreno, owners of Moreno Trucking, and Edmundo Jose Lira, operator of a trucking business. All three companies hire drivers to transport cargo from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The suits allege that by misclassifying their drivers the companies fail to pay Unemployment Insurance taxes, to pay Employment Training Fund taxes, to withhold and transmit State Disability Insurance taxes, to withhold State income taxes and file a withholding return, to provide workers’ compensation insurance, and to provide employees with pay stubs. All these items are required under various sections of California law. Please contact your labor law attorney immediately if you have questions on the proper classification of your workers as employees or independent contractors. Vision Payroll will work with you to help ensure proper taxes are paid, returns filed, and pay stubs provided.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees must be paid a minimum hourly wage and an overtime premium of one and one-half times the regular rate of pay for hours worked in excess of forty per week. This is the one of a continuing series that discusses FLSA exemptions. The administrative exemption allows employees who qualify as “administrative employees” to be exempted from both minimum wage and overtime requirements. Earlier posts discussed the definition of an administrative employee. The following are examples of specific jobs that generally either qualify or don’t qualify the employee under the administrative exemption:

• Insurance claims adjusters qualify whether they work for an insurance or other type company.
• Financial services employees who analyze information, advise customers, market, service or promote the products qualify, but not those whose primary duty is selling.
• Employees who lead a team of employees “assigned to complete major projects for the employer”, even those without direct supervisory authority should qualify.
• Executive assistant or administrative assistant to a business owner or senior executive will qualify if the assistant has been delegated authority over significant matters.
• Human resources mangers who “formulate, interpret or implement employment policies” do qualify. Personnel clerks who screen applicants for minimum acceptable standards as set by others generally do not qualify.
• Management consultants who propose changes in a business’s operation qualify.
• Purchasing agents with authority to make significant purchases qualify even if the agents need consultation for unusually large commitments.
• Inspectors “along standardized lines involving well-established techniques and procedures” and those doing other ordinary inspection work do not qualify.
• Examiners or graders do not qualify, even if the employee has progressed to a point that reference to written standards is unnecessary because of acquired knowledge.
• Comparison shoppers who report prices to a retail stores buyer do not qualify, but the buyer who evaluates the information to set the prices does qualify.
• Inspectors and investigators in the public sector, including those involved in “fire prevention or safety, building or construction, health or sanitation, environmental or soils specialists” among others do not qualify.

Note that merely giving someone a title does not qualify the employee as exempt unless the duties and responsibilities that the job encumbers are also designated. State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about the administrative exemption.

The Labor Department of the Arizona Industrial Commission announced recently that pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes §23-363, the minimum wage for the state of Arizona will increase to $7.25 per hour effective January 1, 2009. The law requires an adjustment to the minimum wage be calculated each year. The adjustment is tied to the US All-Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the 12 months ending in August. The 5.4% increase in the CPI will result in an increase of $0.35 for 2009. Contact Vision Payroll if you have any questions on the Arizona minimum wage increase or visit our Minimum Wage Chart.