RECENT PAYROLL NEWS

[Lee B]

Copied from the BNA Blog:

 

Here is a roundup of payroll issues covered in the past week:

 

Federal

 

A House bill (H.R. 2213) was introduced April 10 that would permanently extend the work opportunity tax credit. The credit, which ranges from $1,200 to $9,600 per employee, seeks to help veterans, the long-term unemployed, felons, the disabled, and other disadvantaged groups.

 

A congressional plan for federal paid family leave would use health savings accounts to fund the program. Employers would make pre-tax contributions to the accounts under the plan, which was introduced April 9 by Rep. Andrew Biggs (R.-Ariz.).

 

Reports of business identity theft were up about 10 percent in 2018 compared, with 2017, the IRS said April 8. Compared with individual identity theft, which had an 18 percent decrease in reports over the same period, business identity theft may take a variety of forms, such as stealing the employer’s  identification number or W-2 information, as well as making fraudulent wire transfers, the IRS said.

 

Treasury Department and IRS officials March 28 presented payroll-industry representatives with an early draft of the 2020 Form W-4 that  would implement changes required by the tax code overhaul (Pub. L. 115-97).

 

State

 

Nebraska employers may make unemployment tax payments on an annual basis, instead of quarterly, if they have a positive account balance and no late payments on Oct. 31 of a given year, under an amendment to a state regulation effective April 10.

 

New Jersey’s wage base for employee contributions the state temporary disability and family leave programs is to increase by nearly four times in 2020, to $131,000 from $34,400, a spokesman for the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said April 9.

 

New Mexico added an income tax bracket of 5.9 percent for high earners, to take effect in 2021, in a tax-changes bill (H.B. 6) signed April 4 by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D)

[Medlin Software, Dennis]

https://www.bna.com/payroll-blog/

A reasonable free source for relatively current info.  They post most Friday's (although the latest was April 12).  It is one of the many places I monitor to try to catch changes before they happen...