When an employee is hurt on the job and misses work, the wage-loss benefits the carrier pays depend on how the claim classifies the employee's disability at that moment. In the first weeks, that is usually temporary total disability (TTD): the employee can't work at all while recovering. When the employee goes back to restricted work at lower pay, the claim usually shifts to temporary partial disability (TPD). Later, once recovery plateaus, any lasting ...
An injured employee's first money question is usually "How much will I get?" The second, often asked a few weeks later when the first check arrives, is "Do I owe taxes on this?" The short answer is that workers' compensation benefits paid under a workers' comp law are not taxable income. The longer answer, and the one HR needs, is that almost everything the employer adds around those benefits is taxable: salary continuation above the statutory benefit, top-up pay, PTO used to fill the gap, ...
Bringing an injured employee back on light duty already saves money: wage-loss benefits stop or shrink, the claim closes sooner and the employee stays connected to work. A few states go further and pay the employer part of the cost of that light-duty job. Washington and Oregon run the best-known programs, and both reimburse half of the wages paid during an early return, plus some of the cost of tools, training and clothing the job requires.
Many eligible employers never claim the ...
When an employee is hurt or goes out on medical leave, at least five people have a piece of the case: the supervisor, the carrier or TPA adjuster, the treating provider, the leave administrator and payroll. Without one person who owns the whole case, the restrictions arrive at the wrong desk, the light-duty offer goes out two weeks late, and nobody notices that the FMLA clock and the workers' comp claim are telling different stories.
A return-to-work coordinator is ...
An income withholding order for support lands on someone's desk, and that someone is often in HR rather than payroll. The math belongs to payroll, but most of what goes wrong with an IWO happens before or after the math: the order sits in a mailroom tray for two weeks, nobody tells the child support agency that the employee quit, the medical support notice never reaches the health plan, or a supervisor mentions the order in front of the team. Those are HR and benefits failures, and they ...
Most multi-state employers buy one workers' compensation policy, list the states where they have employees, and let the carrier handle the rest. That approach works in 46 states. In four, it does not. North Dakota, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming are monopolistic states: workers' comp coverage for employees working there must come from the state's own fund, and a private carrier's policy cannot provide it.
The gap usually shows up the hard way. A company hires a remote ...
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