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| | Special #89 April 27, 2021 |
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| HR and Employment Law News |
| | ¶45,798 President calls on employers to provide paid leave for COVID-19 vaccination — FEDERAL NEWS,(Apr. 26, 2021) Taken from GEA's HR Answers Now On April 21, President Biden called on U.S. employers to offer full pay to their employees for time off needed to get vaccinated and for any time it takes to recover from the after-effects of vaccination. To back up the call, Biden announced a paid leave tax credit to offset the cost for employers with fewer than 500 employees that is delivered through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
Paid leave for vaccinations. The IRS posted information (including a fact sheet) about the plan, which permits small and midsize employers and certain government employers to claim refundable tax credits that reimburse them for the cost of providing paid sick and family leave to their employees due to COVID-19, including for leave taken by employees to receive or recover from COVID-19 vaccinations.
ARPA tax credits are available to eligible employers that pay sick and family for leave from April 1, 2021, through September 30, 2021. Under the Act, eligible employers include any business, including tax-exempt organizations with fewer than 500 employees who are not able to work or telework due to reasons related to COVID-19, including needing to recover from any injury, disability, illness or condition related to the vaccinations.
The IRS has informed taxpayers that the paid leave credits under the ARPA are tax credits against the employer’s share of the Medicare tax. The tax credits are refundable, and the employer is entitled to payment of the full amount of credits if it exceeds the employer’s share of the Medicare tax. The tax credit for paid sick leave wages is equal to the sick leave wages paid for COVID-19 related reasons, for up to two weeks at 100 percent of the employee’s regular rate of pay. Further, the tax credit for paid family leave wages is equal to the family leave wages paid for up to 12 weeks, at two-thirds of the employee’s regular rate of pay. Importantly, the amount of these tax credits increases according to allocable health plan expenses and contributions for certain collectively bargained benefits, as well as the employer’s share of social security and Medicare taxes paid on the wages.
Claiming credits. Eligible employers are recommended to report their total paid sick and family leave wages, health plan expenses and collectively bargained contributions, including their share of social security and Medicare taxes on the paid leave wages for each quarter on their federal employment tax return. Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return, can be used to report income tax and social security and Medicare taxes withheld from employee wages.
Further, in anticipation of claiming the credits on the Form 941, eligible employers can retain the federal employment taxes that they otherwise would have deposited, including federal income tax withheld, the employees’ share of social security, Medicare taxes and their share of social security and Medicare taxes with respect to all employees up to the amount of credit for which they are eligible. If, however, an eligible employer does not have enough federal employment taxes set aside for deposit to cover amounts provided as paid sick and family leave wages, the eligible employer may request an advance of the credits by filing Form 7200, Advance Payment of Employer Credits Due to COVID-19. The eligible employer will then have to account for the amounts received as an advance when they file Form 941, Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return, for the relevant quarter. Finally, self-employed individuals may claim comparable tax credits on their individual Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return.
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| | HRDive.com Brief: EEOC to publish vaccine incentive guidance, but will it be 'too late'?
Published April 23, 2021
By: Kate Tornone @KateTornone
Dive Brief: - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will update its coronavirus guidance to include information on vaccine incentives, the agency’s acting legal counsel told stakeholders in an April 15 letter shared with HR Dive.
- That promise came after employers and business groups — including the Society for Human Resource Management, the HR Policy Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — requested such information from the commission Feb. 1.
- The letter did not indicate what position the agency would take or when it would make such information public. "Your letter specifically asks the EEOC to 'clarify[…] the extent to which employers may offer employees incentives to vaccinate without running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] and other laws enforced by the EEOC,'" wrote Carol Miaskoff, acting legal counsel. "The agency expects to update its technical assistance about COVID-19 to address these issues, among others, and that work is ongoing." Continue Reading >>
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Publicity: The not-so-hidden cost of a lawsuitBY ROBIN SHEA ON 4.23.21 POSTED IN BACKGROUND CHECKS
And then you go and make it worse.
The Volokh Conspiracy posted last week about a Human Resources Business Partner who sued his former employer in federal court (Oregon).
- I am in a charitable mood as I write this post, so I won't name the HR guy.|
- Anyway, he and his former employer finally settled their case. In 2018.
- Last week, he asked the court to seal the records related to his lawsuit because . . .
. . . some search engines picked up his case and made it available over the internet in addition to Pacer, the electronic portal for federal court records. And employers are finding his lawsuit on the internet and are not hiring him. Also, they're getting access to confidential information about how much money he made at his job with this former employer.
The judge denied his motion to seal the court record because public court records are, like, public.
Y'all have heard of the Streisand Effect, right? That's when you try to hide something and, in the act of hiding, draw 1,000 times more attention to whatever it was you were trying to hide.... Continue Reading >>
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| | HRDive.com Article: Coronavirus is not a 'get-out-of-jail card' for ADA compliance, EEOC commish says
As the pandemic evolves and the country's response shifts, employers must remember that ADA regs still require individualized assessments.
The coronavirus pandemic does not absolve employers of their Americans with Disabilities Act responsibilities, a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission official told attendees at an April 8 American Bar Association conference.
And as the pandemic evolves and the country’s response shifts, employers must remember that ADA regulations still require individualized assessments for employees and applicants with disabilities. "There are likely to be significant changes to key underlying assessments in the ADA space, namely what constitutes a direct threat, and what rises to an undue hardship," Andrea Lucas, an EEOC commissioner, said, cautioning that she was not speaking for the full commission.....
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Georgia Employers' Association |
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