President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) into law on March 11, 2021. Along with providing financial relief for individuals, state and local governments, schools, businesses and for other purposes, the law contains the following measures of special interest to employers and their employees: A subsidy for COBRA premiums, funded […]
On July 24, 2020, President Donald Trump issued the following series of executive orders in an effort to lower drug prices: Executive Order on Lowering Prices for Patients by Eliminating Kickbacks to Middlemen: directs federally qualified health centers to pass along massive discounts on insulin and epinephrine received from drug companies to certain low-income Americans. […]
Employers are required to report the amount of qualified sick and family leave wages paid to employees under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) on Form W-2, according to guidance from the IRS and the U.S. Treasury Department. The guidance was provided in Notice 2020-54, issued by the agencies on July 8, 2020. Reporting […]
Open enrollment following the COVID-19 pandemic will be unlike any other in recent memory. Many organizations are still trying to recover from extended closures and maintain safe working environments—open enrollment is the last thing on their minds. Yet, procrastinating on enrollment planning can actually cause more issues than it solves. This article explains what employers […]
Federal laws, such as the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Equal Pay Act, impose recordkeeping duties on employers. Recordkeeping duties include creating, updating and preserving information. Pennsylvania law also imposes several record keeping requirements on employers in the state. These operate in addition to or in conjunction with the […]
Introduction Millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000—are projected to make up 50 percent of the workforce by 2020 and 75 percent by 2025. As more baby boomers retire, no longer are millennials the workers of the future; instead, they are the leaders of today. A lot has been said about millennials, but one thing that […]
OVERVIEW The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides eligible employees with unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons. Eligible employees may take up to 12 weeks of leave (26 weeks for military caregiver leave) each year for FMLA-qualifying reasons. Because FMLA leave is unpaid, employees often request time off under another leave […]
OVERVIEW The IRS recently released an information letter describing circumstances that would allow an employer to recover contributions mistakenly made to its employees’ HSAs. Previously, IRS guidance allowed employers to recover HSA contributions in very limited situations, such as when the contribution exceeded the applicable annual limit. The new guidance also allows employers to recover […]
On Dec. 22, 2017, President Donald Trump signed the tax reform bill, called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, into law, after it passed both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. This tax reform bill, drafted based on a tax reform plan that was developed in consultation with the Trump administration, will […]
