Small Business Training Center

As a reminder, EEO-1 Reports are due September 30th every year for private employers with at least 100 employees, or federal contractors with 50 employees.  Employers will need to select a pay period between July and September and report demographic information for active employees in that pay period.  Information includes total number of employees broken down by gender, ethnicity, and job class.  If you use HR software to keep track of these employee statistics, you most likely have a report that you can run to give you these totals.

Death isn’t something most of us want to think about, let alone plan for.  But offering a term life insurance policy can be a relatively inexpensive way to round out your employee benefits package offering.   Some employers pay for a set dollar amount of employee life insurance, while others base the amount on salary or some other factor such as employee class or tenure.  Some employers allow the employees the option to purchase additional life insurance beyond the company paid amount for themselves, including their family members.  Some life insurance polices also include an “Accidental Death and Dismemberment” benefit.  This means if the employee dies due to an accident, the amount of life insurance paid is doubled.  There are other benefits paid if the employee loses sight or limbs due to an accident.  Your insurance agent can advise you on the various options of offering life insurance to your employees.

What is reasonable compensation? The IRS says it’s what an owner/employee should be paid. This concept can be somewhat elusive since there is no hard set of rules. It’s based on the facts and circumstances of each individual case. However it is an important question, especially for S-Corp owners, as this is an area of audit concern for the IRS. Since most people want to pay as little in taxes as possible, the owner’s motivation may not drive him to the right decision in determining his own compensation. 

Minnesota has terminated the reciprocity agreement between their state and the state of Wisconsin. This was due to Wisconsin taking approximately 17 months to submit payments to Minnesota. The state needs to receive the payments in a more timely manner to help balance their budget. The two states tried to reach an agreement on a new payment schedule but was unsuccessful. On January 1, 2010, Minnesota officially terminated the agreement. 

The process of firing an employee is often uncomfortable and difficult, especially if the employee has been with your company a long time. It is an emotional decision that can keep employers up at night, as it has for me in the past. Many of us wish that it could be as easy as this, but it’s not. 

Wall Street Journal article How to Avoid Employee Lawsuits explains that small business owners are vulnerable to employee lawsuits in the areas of:

Here is an excellent article on saving money on your Worker’s Compensation expenses entitled  Money-Saving Strategies for Workers’ Compensation: