Payroll & Business Experts Blog

“History is an extraordinary thing. You can choose to learn from it, or you can choose to repeat it.” 
     -  Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis

Sometimes going back in history helps us learn how the laws and regulations we have in place today relating to workforce safety came into existence and the significant events that helped shape our future.

March 25th marked the 100 year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers… mostly young women and teenage girls.  The deaths of these workers triggered the beginning of the modern day labor movement and changed the future of the American workplace.

One year ago, on March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA) making health care more accessible and affordable for Americans.  Some information explaining the health care law came out this week to help clarify the benefits Americans and small businesses can expect from this legislation.

Watch a 5-Minute Video: Vice President Biden Talks About One Year of the Affordable Care Act

Health Care Reform Now and in the Future:  Benefits to Young Adults and Small Business
U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis answers three questions about the new health care reform law.

As the one year anniversary of the health care reform act approaches, how much do you really know about the law?  Want to test your knowledge with a simple 10 question quiz?  You might be surprised at how well you understand what the law will really do.

The Kaiser Family Foundation created a 10 question interactive quiz that allows Americans to test their knowledge about what’s in… and what’s not in… the health care reform law.  At the end of the quiz, your results will be compared to others that were asked the same series of 10 questions in one of the Foundation’s recent monthly Health Tracking Polls.  The quiz also includes links to more information about specific provisions of the law to help you better understand any questions you did not answer correctly.

With all the announcements, proposed changes and regulation updates that come out from the various government agencies, it’s hard to keep up with everything.  To help you stay informed about some of the most important news that could directly affect your business, we’ll periodically post news briefs on our blog.  These articles will contain short snippets of news that are released from the IRS, Department of Labor, OSHA and other government agencies.

Labor Department to Target Misclassification in 2011
In a live Q & A session earlier this year, Nancy Leppink, Deputy Administrator of the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) discussed initiatives aimed at the misclassification of employees as independent contractors in several high-risk industries… construction, janitorial, home health care, child care, transportation and warehousing, meat and poultry processing, and other professional and personnel service industries.  While the precise extent of misclassification is unknown, 13 studies suggest that it may affect 10 to 30 percent of employers.  WHD is currently conducting directed investigations, having an increase presence in these key industries and is targeting employers who are identified as having misclassified employees or groups of employees.

When filing your Federal income tax return, taxpayers can choose to either take the standard deduction or to itemize their deductions.  The IRS has put together the following six facts to help you choose the method that gives you the lowest tax.

Whether to itemize deductions on your tax return depends on how much you spent on certain expenses last year.  Money paid for medical care, mortgage interest, taxes, charitable contributions, casualty losses and miscellaneous deductions can reduce your taxes.  If the total amount spent on those categories is more than your standard deduction, you can usually benefit by itemizing.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration announced a final rule that improves the H-2B temporary nonagricultural worker program, better protects U.S. workers and addresses the calculations used to set wage rates for H-2B workers.  The final rule addresses concerns that the calculation method enacted in the 2008 rulemaking did not adequately reflect the appropriate wages necessary to ensure U.S. workers are not adversely affected by the employment of H-2B workers.

View the H-2B Wage Rate Ruling Press Release from the U.S. Department of Labor

Earlier this year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released an updated version of The Handbook for Employers to help employers better understand the Form I-9 process.

The Handbook has been revised with new information regarding applicable rules and policies, new regulations about electronic storage and retention of I-9 forms, how to process an employee with a complicated immigration status and also addresses public comments and frequently asked questions. 

The following is a guest blog post by Bob Melso,
Vice President at DocuSense.

Are you paying too much for office equipment you don't use?  I can’t remember the last time I felt good after reviewing a prospective client’s office machine fleet billing.  Last week I saw yet another example of the type of mistakes companies routinely make when acquiring printing and copying equipment.  This client has 30 machines, all of them 11 x 17 tabloid-capable tanks.

What is your strategy for building repeat business, boosting brand awareness and increasing the average amount of a customer’s purchase?  Is it through advertising, direct mail or email campaigns?  Did you know that traditional direct mail campaigns often deliver response rates of less than 1 percent?  How would you like to generate response rates that are 4 to 7 times higher than traditional direct mail promotions?  Prepaid incentive cards are the new direct marketing tool that can give you these kinds of results.