Payroll Today

Remember landing your first job? It was challenging. For some individuals, it can be almost impossible. One tax credit aims to help employers hire members of certain disadvantaged groups—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

Third-party administrators must collect a lot of key information about employees in order to properly administer your 401(k) plan. The issue is how TPAs use this data outside the 401(k) plan. Unhelpfully, ERISA doesn’t classify employees’ personal data as a plan asset, so no fiduciary duties apply t

W-2 overtime reporting, DOL and IRS regulatory agendas, and more in our first autumn wrap.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act allows employees to deduct $25,000 of tips on their 1040s through 2028. Tuesday, the Treasury Department released a draft list of 68 tipped occupations.

Employees started suing group health plans last year using the 401(k) playbook—the choice of vendors and the hit to employees’ wallets. Those cases involved specific vendors. This latest case alleges a more general fiduciary breach and is a warning to employers to choose plan options carefully.

The OBBBA’s increase in tax-free dependent care benefits to $7,500 a year, from $5,000, beginning in January, would seem to provide some modest relief to working couples. But there’s more to consider.

Draft 2026 W-4, SSA feedback, DOL goes paperless and more in our end-of-summer wrap.

This joyous moment in every parent’s life comes with some downsides—namely, the need to take time off to deal with visits to the principal’s office, school plays and class trips. States have laws on this subject.

There is no doubt Congress rushed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Not one hearing was held during which payroll pros were afforded the chance to point out the many pitfalls of the OBBBA’s no taxes on tips. And this has the makings of a Las Vegas-style hangover for the IRS and, tangentially, you.

There is an old and, we admit, very sick joke about a criminal defendant being charged with murdering their parents and then objecting to the charge because they’re an orphan. Fact follows fiction, with a twist: This defendant’s unique take on ERISA.