Smart Benefits: Three Hot HR Topics for 2016
Monday, January 11, 2016
ACA: Reporting for the employer mandate begins in 2016, affecting all mid-sized and large employers. And much of the mandate’s transitional relief ends this year. That means penalties will now apply to employers with 50-99 full-time equivalent employees. It also increases the percentage of employees to whom covered employers must offer coverage—from 70% to 95%—and decreases the number that can be subtracted from the penalty calculation—from 80 to 30. And employers must now use the average number of employees calculated from all 12 months of 2015 (rather than any six consecutive months) to determine whether they qualify as an applicable large employer.
Fair Labor Standards Act Changes: Proposed changes to the white collar exemptions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are expected to be finalized sometime in 2016, while the exact timing is unknown at this point. If the final rules reflect those proposed, the salary level of $50,440 will more than double the salary threshold for workers otherwise eligible for a white collar exemption from minimum wage and overtime requirements under the FLSA. And that’s not all. The rules also propose an automatic annual adjustment to both the white collar salary level and the highly compensated employee compensation rate tied either to a cost of living index or a set percentile of earnings across all salaried workers.
Minimum Wage Increases: On January 1, the minimum wage increased in 14 states, including Rhode Island, where it rose to $9.60/hour. But discussions among economists, politicians and workers continue about raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. To date, however, the push for a $15 hourly wage has been on a municipal level, and most action has included an incremental increase over several years. Among those cities with a planned $15 minimum wage are Seattle, by 2017 for businesses with 500-plus U.S. employees and by 2021 for others, and Los Angeles, by 2020.
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