Paychex Highlights Top Compliance Issues Impacting Businesses Over the Summer

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top compliance issues of summer Paychex, Inc. has released a list of the top five regulatory issues of the summer that could affect most small and medium sized businesses.

“Health care reform continues to be a major issue on the minds of businesses large and small,” Martin Mucci, Paychex president and CEO, said. “Couple that with other hot topics such as immigration reform and the marriage definition, and it’s clear the summer could prove to be an extremely consequential time for issues affecting the country’s business climate.”

The top five issues include:

• Health care reform, and particularly Employer Shared Responsibility, tops the list of impactful compliance issues for the summer. The regulation requires employers with at least 50 full-time employees to determine whether the requirement applies to them and then identify which employees must either be offered health coverage or face a penalty. Employers must also determine if their offered health coverage meets minimum standards set forth by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

• Immigration reform is a top concern this summer, especially regarding the mandatory E-Verify requirement required by the reform bill recently passed by the U.S. Senate (Border Security, Economic Opportunity, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act).

• The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is expected to require a number of changes to employment policies including those regarding payroll taxes, health insurance, FSA/Section 125, and employment regulations.

• Online sales tax may soon allow states to require Internet retailers with over $1 million in sales collect sales tax for state and local governments. Currently, the Marketplace Fairness Act has only been passed by the Senate but President Obama supports the bill and many large online retailers support it as well.

• Employment regulation will continue to be an active area for at least the remainder of the Obama administration. Of particular attention are the topics of background checks and worker misclassification. The U.S. EEOC has recently ruled that the use of criminal histories when making employment decisions may violate employment discrimination policies of the Civil Rights Act. The IRS has also increased enforcement efforts regarding worker misclassifications as independent contractors.

 

By Joshua Bjerke