Category Archives: Benefits

Webinar for Texas Employers on CARES and FFCRA

Attendence, Benefits, Compensation, Employee Rights, Medical, Privacy, ,

Today, Texas employment attorney Vicki Wilmarth and health insurance benefits expert, Josh Butler, presented a webinar entitled Texas Employer’s Guide to Coronavirus Legal Issues.

Even if you missed the webinar live, you can watch the free 1-hour presentation for an overview about the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) (paid leave law) and Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (“CARES”) (stimulus bill) on your own time. https://youtu.be/BGJCnHOJp18

You can also view the slides from the webinar here.

COVID-19 Paid Leave Laws Affect Small Employers

Attendence, Benefits, Compensation, Employee Rights, Medical, Personnel Policies, , , , ,

Congress has passed and President Trump has signed a new law that requires small employers to provide paid leave to employees for two weeks of sick leave and as many as 10 weeks of leave to take care of kids whose schools have closed.

This Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) goes into effect on April 1, 2020. It requires all employers with less than 500 employees, including very small employers and nonprofits, to pay employees whose absences are caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. The DOL has created a fact sheet and an FAQ to help employers understand these laws better.

Here are a few highlights of the FFCRA law:

Paid sick leave for two weeks is available to all full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal, and other kind of employee if the employee has to miss work for one of the following reasons:

  1. Employee is subject to government quarantine; or
  2. Employee has been advised by healthcare provider to self-quarantine; or
  3. Employee is experiencing symptoms and seeking a diagnosis; or
  4. Employee is caring for an individual subject to quarantine or self-quarantine as advised by healthcare provider; or
  5. Employee is caring for children under 18 because schools or “caregivers” are unavailable; or
  6. Employee is experiencing any other condition that is substantially similar to COVID-19, as specified in HHS regulations to come.

Paid Family and Medical Leave is available for up to 10 more weeks (after using up 2 weeks of unpaid time or 2 weeks of Emergency Paid Sick Leave as spelled out above) to all full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal or other kind of employee if the employee has worked for the employer for at least 30 days and then has to miss work for this one reason:

  • The employee is unavailable to work or telework because the employee is caring for a child under the age of 18 because that child’s school or childcare facility is closed because of the coronavirus.

The paid sick leave has to be paid at the employees’ regular hourly rate (including commissions, tips and piece rates, but not overtime rates) if the employee is absent for reasons #1-3, above. The paid sick leave and the paid family and medical leave have to be paid at 2/3 of the employee’s regular hourly rate if the employee is absent for reasons #4-6, above. There are also daily and total caps on the amounts you have to pay the employees for these absences.

Employers with less than 50 employees are subject to these FFCRA paid leave laws, even though you have never before been required to comply with Family and Medical Leave Act or any paid leave law. There is a provision that the Secretary of Labor can exempt a business when giving the leave would “jeopardize the vitality of the business.” In other words, if granting this paid leave could make your company go out of business, and you can prove that in your financials, you might not have to provide this paid leave. You don’t have to get the Secretary of Labor’s permission for this exemption by filing anything, but you will have to be able to document the correctness of your decision after the fact.

This law is not retroactive, meaning you don’t have to pay for leave taken before April 1, 2020, if it wasn’t your company policy to pay employee absences.

However, you also can’t make employees apply your paid time off policy before using this emergency paid sick leave or family leave. It is the employee’s choice alone on how to coordinate their PTO and these paid leave laws.

The good news for employers is that the employer gets a tax credit on payroll taxes for 100% of these amounts paid to employees for emergency sick leave and paid Family and Medical Leave. On the next Form 941 that will be due by July 31, 2020, the IRS will add a line for the employer to take the tax credit. If the amount you paid out to your employees for these paid leave laws exceeds the payroll taxes that you owe, then you are supposed to be able to get a refund from the IRS within 2 weeks after filing your Form 941.

We are still waiting for the Secretary of Labor to provide more guidance through regulations. He should also be providing us with notices, posters and other explanations to give to your employees.

There are also other employment laws that a company has to consider in this crisis, which are summarized here.

Paid Sick Leave Required in Some Texas Cities

Attendence, Benefits, Hiring, Medical, Personnel Policies, , , ,

Do you as an employer provide your employees in Texas at least six to eight days of paid sick leave every year? If you have employees who work in Dallas or San Antonio, you are about to be required to do so. You should be immediately adding a paid sick leave policy that complies with municipal ordinances that take effect August 1, 2019 in those two cities.

If you have an employee who works at least 80 hours per year in the city limits of Dallas or San Antonio, the new ordinances require you as the employer (if you employ five or more people anywhere) to provide that employee with one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours that the employee works within those city limits. It doesn’t matter if your business isn’t based in one of those cities, just whether your employee performs work there.

Of course, offering this paid sick leave only to your employees who work in San Antonio and Dallas could create workforce animosity and claims of discrimination among your other employees, so employers making changes to their policies need to carefully consider whether a company-wide sick leave policy revision is the smartest move at this point.

Here are the general details of the two municipal paid sick leave ordinances in Dallas and San Antonio. You should ask your employment lawyer to help you include the specifics in your revised written sick leave policy if you have Dallas and San Antonio workers:

  • If you have 15 or more employees, then you must allow your Dallas and San Antonio employees to accrue at least 64 hours of sick leave per year. For smaller employers (5-14 employees employed anywhere), the total amount of paid sick leave required per year is 48 hours.
  • The paid sick leave laws apply to full and part-time employees, so those of you who don’t provide benefits to part-time employees in Dallas and San Antonio will need to revise your policies.
  • These ordinances say that employees can use their paid sick leave as soon as it is accrued. So if you require an initial probationary or orientation period in which paid time off can’t be used, you’ll have to rethink your policy in that regard.
  • This paid sick leave can be used for more than employee’s own mental or physical health problems. The employee can take the paid time off for a family member’s illnesses, any family member’s victimization (such as domestic violence or sexual assault), and for doctor’s appointments for the employee or a family member. “Family member” is defined broadly and includes blood relatives as well as anyone who has such a close association with the employee to be considered family (such as a live-in partner).
  • You have to allow carry over of accrued but unused paid sick leave to the next year if you use the accrual method. However, if you provide all of the paid sick leave the employee will be entitled to at the beginning of the year, then you don’t have to allow carry over (this is also much easier to administer than the accrual method).
  • You can’t retaliate against an employee for using the sick leave he/she is entitled to.
  • Enforcement won’t go into full effect on these ordinances until April 2020, but you should be amending your policies now to comply with the August 1, 2019 effective date.

These ordinances have not been without controversy. The business lobby in Texas is fighting hard against these paid sick leave laws. A similar one in Austin is currently enjoined by a court battle, headed to the Texas Supreme Court, and won’t be taking effect as scheduled. But the court battle will take significant time and the 2019 Texas Legislative session ended last month with the lawmakers failing to pass any bill to standardize these municipal ordinances statewide or prohibit cities from passing them, so there is little chance that Dallas and San Antonio’s laws won’t go into effect in August, even if they are challenged in court later.

Even if you don’t have Dallas and San Antonio employees, I think all Texas employers must consider offering paid sick leave right now. Not only are states and cities all over the country requiring this, but employees are coming to expect this benefit.

Plus such a change can benefit an employer in a time of historically low unemployment in this state. It seems that almost every employer that I represent tells me that he/she can’t hire and keep good help. So shouldn’t you be offering some kind of paid sick leave to improve your hiring and retention? Maybe it would be helpful to adopt a policy that would comply with these city ordinances as part of a more comprehensive review and beefing up of your benefits to attract and retain high-quality employees.

Even Walmart (long regarded as one of America’s worst employers) recognized in 2019 the value of providing its hourly employees with 48 hours of paid sick leave per year in addition to regular paid time off. In fact, Walmart’s new company-wide paid sick leave policy looks surprisingly similar to the ordinances just passed by Dallas and San Antonio. Walmart wasn’t being altruistic, of course. It just made the move to standardize its policies to comply with a nationwide patchwork of new state and municipal laws requiring employers provide paid sick leave.

My Christmas Wishes for Employers

Attendence, Benefits, Drug Testing, Ethics, Forms and Policies, Personnel Policies, , , , , ,

It is that time of year when we are singing, “We wish you a Merry Christmas”. As an employment lawyer with 30 years of experience, I have some idea of what you as a business owner or manager are wishing this Christmas.

I know you work hard as a supervisor. Managing people every day isn’t an easy job, particularly if your employees do not have a willing attitude to try to be a good employee.

I hear from employers every day about the frustrations that you face as an employer. The average person who supervises employees spends at least 20% of her time just dealing with employee mistakes, complaints, emotions, negligence, etc., on top of trying to do all of her regular work.

So, for this Christmas, I have made a list of what I wish for you as a supervisor in terms of employees.

  • Employees who realize that the purpose of a business is to make a profit, and that requires that the employee actually be present to perform the work assigned. I recently had a matter involving an employee who was tardy repeatedly for things like a flat tire, a loose dog and “I forgot to set my alarm”, so that client meetings had to be cancelled and business was lost. I wish for you as a supervisor the employment of people who realize that these little issues chip away at a business’s profitability. Even a small company should provide a generous amount of vacation time, sick leave and holiday pay. But once an employee has used up his allotted paid time off, he needs to think seriously about getting back to work and being productive for you or the business may not be there to provide his paid vacation the next year.
  • Employees who can be trusted with the success of your business, as well as the company’s time, money, and equipment. Every year I see a number of business owners in the Panhandle lose significant amounts of money to employee embezzlement, lose equipment to employee negligence and lose profitability to employee laziness. Granted, the employer needs to have reasonable checks and balances in place to try to prevent these losses. But wouldn’t it be nice if all of your employees were the kind of people who had enough integrity to forego theft, enough caution to treat your property as theirs, and enough loyalty to go above and beyond the bare minimum effort.
  • Sober employees. Most business now drug-test when an employee is hired. This has resulted in a drop nationwide in pre-hire positive drug tests. But I still see injuries and damage done by substance-abusing employees after they have worked for the business for a while. My wish is that you don’t have to deal with those issues. You can help make my wish come true by actually requiring the occasional random drug and alcohol testing in your workplace, as well as testing immediately after any personal injury or property damage occurs at work that might have been caused by an impaired employee.
  • Employees who exercise verbal discretion. Employees who gossip, spread rumors, complain, speculate and backstab in an effort to make themselves look better simply don’t realize that respect is given to those who keep their negativity and rumor-mongering to themselves. It would be great if Santa could bring each of your employees the gift of discretion this year. As someone wise said, “Discretion is the ability to raise your eyebrow instead of your voice.”
  • Employees who appreciate feedback and even criticism because it makes them better at their job. I have often thought that the clearest sign of maturity in an employee is his ability to accept constructive criticism, or even better, to ask for it. So, I wish for you employees who know that wisdom comes from humility and accountability. You deserve those employees who are not afraid to find out if they made a mistake and to ask you the best course to avoid such mistakes in the future.
  • Employees who take pride in their work regardless of who gets the credit. “My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.” – Indira Ghandi. Enough said.

Such employees sound like a dream, like a Christmas wish, don’t they? But you probably know that the best way to cultivate such employees is to lead from the top down. You must be the type of leader whose character, work ethic, sobriety, discretion and integrity are unquestionable if that is the type employee you want to employ.

As I have said before in my blog posts: “You will get the employees you deserve if you are quick-tempered, unfair, dishonest, prejudiced, undependable, selfish or disloyal to your employees. Your values, good or bad, will set the standard for everyone you supervise.”

 

         

Simple Hiring Checklist for Texas Employers

Attendence, Benefits, Discrimination, Documentation, Drug Testing, Hiring, Personnel Policies, , , , , , ,

hiring-signHiring in Texas can be done in a very efficient and effective manner that reduces your chances of violating employment laws if you follow this simple hiring checklist. While large employers may need to add many more steps, I have found in 25+ years of law practice that many small employers aren’t even doing these simple steps, but should be:

 

  • Is one well-trained centralized manager with human resources experience doing the hiring instead of a group of supervisors who might ask the wrong questions?
  • Do you have a job description of the job for which you are hiring so you know the job-related qualifications?
  • Did you carefully word your job advertising so as not to discriminate?
  • If you require that an application be completed, is your application form up to date and without legal pitfalls?
  • Does the interview focus only on job-related qualifications and not personal information?
  • Do you stay away from open-ended questions like “Tell me about yourself”, which could elicit all kinds of information from the applicant that could be considered the basis of a discrimination claim?
  • Is the interviewer using an outline so that each applicant is asked the same questions and you can compare apples to apples rather than relying on the interviewer’s conversation skills and “gut reaction”?
  • Do not ask questions in the interview about the following topics. If this seems like a whole bunch of rules to remember, try focusing on this one rule: If your question isn’t related to how the applicant could perform the job duties, don’t ask it.
    • Race or color (photographs should not be requested)
    • Gender or marital status or sexual orientation
    • Whether applicant has young children, what his/her daycare arrangements are, or other family questions.
    • Age, including date of birth or when the applicant graduated from high school
    • Religion, including “Where do you go to church?” and “What do you do with your Sundays?”
    • Union membership or affiliation
    • Criminal arrests or convictions (you can run a background check if you decide to actually offer the job, but you must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act in obtaining the background check)
    • National origin or ethnicity (don’t ask about an applicant’s birthplace, accent, parentage, ancestry).
    • Citizenship (only inquire into an applicant’s eligibility to work in the United States, not their citizenship).
    • Education beyond what is necessary for the job (inflated educational requirements can have a chilling effect on minority applicants; therefore only ask educational questions that are relevant to the actual job responsibilities).
    • What clubs and organizations do you belong to? What causes do you support? (this could reveal illnesses, religious beliefs, family issues, marital status, race and other grounds on which you could be accused of discriminating).
    • Are you pregnant? Are you planning on having kids? (pregnancy and/or gender discrimination).
    • Have you ever declared bankruptcy? (discrimination under the Bankruptcy Act).
    • Is English your first language? Do you know that we have an English-only policy? (national origin discrimination)
    • Do you have elderly parents or an illness in the family that would take you away from work? (disability discrimination).
  • Do not ask the following questions in an interview that could violate the Americans with Disabilities Act:
    • Whether an applicant needs a reasonable accommodation to perform the job, unless the disability is apparent or the applicant voluntarily divulges it.
    • Details of an applicant’s worker’s compensation history.
    • Whether the applicant can perform “major life activities,” such as standing, lifting and walking.
    • Whether the applicant has any physical or mental impairments.
    • Whether the applicant is taking prescription medication or any other lawful drugs.
    • If the applicant has used illegal drugs in the past or has ever been addicted to drugs.
    • Whether the applicant has participated in an alcohol or drug rehabilitation program.
    • How frequently the applicant consumes alcoholic beverages.
  • Certain questions are permissible under the ADA:
    • Whether an applicant can perform the essential functions of the job.
    • How the applicant will perform the essential functions of the job, if all applicants are asked this question.
    • Whether an applicant needs reasonable accommodation for the hiring process.
    • Whether an applicant can meet the employer’s attendance requirements.
    • Whether an applicant has ever been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol or drug if driving is an essential duty of the job.
    • Whether an applicant is a current illegal drug user (drug testing the successful applicant after a conditional offer of the job is the best way to handle this).

Once you think you have narrowed your choices down to the applicant that you would like to hire, you can make a job offer conditional upon the results of these items: Continue reading Simple Hiring Checklist for Texas Employers →

How Should Employers Respond to 2016 Election?

Benefits, Compensation, Discrimination, Employee Rights, Hiring, , , , , , ,

Employers are facing a time of uncertainty in the workplace as a result of last week’s election. Does an employer still have to worry about compliance with the revised overtime rules? Do you still have to complete the Affordable Care Act tax forms due in January? What about paid maternity leave—must an employer provide salary for six weeks to new mothers? There will certainly be upheaval in the workplace because of the significant change in the governing philosophy to come in January.

Alth19-ryan-trump-mcconnell-w710-h473ough Mr. Trump is already backing off of some of his campaign rhetoric, there are some workplace issues that you as an employer will be affected by:

  • Immigration compliance should be your top concern under this new administration. As an employer, you must be certain that you are correctly completing an I-9 form on every new employee and assuring that you are only hiring applicants who are eligible to work in the United States.
    • A new I-9 form was released today, so you will need to start using that new form dated November 14, 2016, immediately with your new hires. The old 2013 form you have been using may not be used after January 21, 2017. You do not have to recertify your current employees just because they were hired when a different I-9 version was in use.
    • Trump has said that he wants all employers to use E-Verify, the internet verification program used by federal contractors to verify I-9 information provided by a new hire against records from Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. E-Verify sounds much easier in theory than it has proven to be in practice. Get ready for significant paperwork and several new steps whenever you receive a tentative non-confirmation letter from E-Verify on a new hire.
    • Remember that it is illegal to discriminate against an applicant on the basis of national origin or ethnicity. As an employer, you cannot have blanket hiring prohibitions against any group. You must individually check the employment eligibility of each person to whom you offer a job.
  • The new overtime law, which requires employers to pay at least $47,476 in salary to employees whom the employer wants to exempt from the overtime requirements, goes into effect in two weeks on December 1, 2016. That means that you as an employer need to comply with that law now without regard to how it may change down the road.
    • A change to the overtime law is not included in the new administration’s first 100-day plans and Mr. Trump only addressed it one time on the campaign trail. Changing the overtime regulation does not seem to be a top priority, but the possible changes that have been mentioned are an elimination of the automatic increases now scheduled every three years and a small business and/or nonprofit exception to the overtime rule.
    • The final overtime regulation took more two years to become effective after President Obama proposed it. Even if a change to it were fast-tracked, I think that you will have to comply with the current regulation at least until the end of 2017.
    • And even if the new rule is changed next year, are you really going to decrease the salaries of your management employees after they saw the increase this year? If you would consider a decrease as a possibility in the future, then think about putting your salaried employees on hourly pay and overtime pay immediately (by December 1) instead of giving them salary whiplash when this regulation changes down the road.
  • The Affordable Care Act is going to change significantly. How it will change, we don’t know, except that Mr. Trump has promised that it will be “replaced”, not just repealed. If that is the case, employers will still have to deal with healthcare headaches. They will just be new headaches rather than the ones we have learned to cope with over the last six years. For now, as an employer, you must continue to comply with the ACA, including sending out the Form 1095-C after the first of the year.
  • Trump has proposed six-week paid maternity leave. Never before has the federal government required a private employer to provide any paid leave, unless the company was a federal contractor. The Family and Medical Leave Act only requires unpaid leave.
    • This would be a radical departure from Republican policies in the past, which have always frowned on mandates to employers to pay people not to work. There is no indication yet that the U.S. Congress would go along with Mr. Trump’s proposal.
    • Meanwhile, employers should be more concerned right now about complying with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in effect since 1978, but which has grown more teeth in the last couple of years thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Young v. UPS and stricter enforcement by the EEOC.
  • Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 remains the law and no administration would dare push for its revision, or the revision of later laws that prevented discrimination on the basis of age or disability. That means that as an employer (if you have 15 or more employees), you must continue to keep your workplace free from discrimination and harassment on the basis of sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, etc.
    • There were 3500 charges of religious discrimination filed in 2015 with the EEOC. That number has risen 44% in the last 10 years. Employers must be extra vigilant that some of the tenor and tone of the election rhetoric doesn’t lead to any hateful actions in their workplace against, for example, a Muslim employee.
    • Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity is not prohibited by the actual language of Title VII and it seems unlikely that the new administration would champion gay rights in the workplace. There is also no state law in Texas preventing such discrimination, although most of the larger cities in Texas have local ordinances. But employers need to know that the EEOC has targeted employers who are allowing discrimination against LGBT employees and there are several court rulings that back up the EEOC’s position that “sex” as a protected class includes sexual orientation, so all employers should continue to protect their LGBT employees from harassment and unfair treatment.

 

 

New Overtime Rule Changes Salary Basis Requirement

Benefits, Compensation, Personnel Policies, , , , ,

Do you pay any employee on a salary basis instead of paying them hourly and overtime? Of course you do, so you need to be very aware of the new final overtime rule issued by the U.S. Department of Labor on May 17, 2016.

You must pay your salaried employees at least $913 per week ($47,476 per year) beginning December 1, 2016, or you will be in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (which you do not want to violate).

In the past, salaried employees had to be paid $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to qualify as an employee exempt from the FLSA’s requirement of paying overtime for every hour over 40 worked in any one workweek. That salary basis has doubled under the new regulations.

In addition to meeting this increased salary level, the salaried employee must perform the duties of an exempt employee (the white collar exemptions: executive, a professional or an administrator). These duties tests are much more difficult to meet than most people think, so don’t just assume that your salaried employees are actually exempt. For example, not every “manager” is an “executive exempt employee”, who under the FLSA must have the power to hire and fire and must supervise at least 2 full-time employees, as well as being in charge of a recognizable store, division or branch of your business.

This increase in the threshold salary required to consider an employee exempt could change the classification of many Panhandle-area retail managers and assistant managers, human resources directors, marketing professionals, bookkeeping employees, project managers, foremen, performers, and other employees who have not been earning overtime in the past.

Now those exempt employees will either get a raise to get them over the $913 per week threshold or they will have to be changed to nonexempt, hourly employees who earn overtime. Either way, it could mean an overall increase for the employee and higher payroll costs for the employer.   Continue reading New Overtime Rule Changes Salary Basis Requirement →

How Texas Employers Should Respond to Marriage Decision

Benefits, Discrimination, Employee Rights, Forms and Policies, Personnel Policies, , ,

Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states has Texas employers scrambling for a correct response. Businesses need to consider employee benefits, leaves of absence and many other Texas workplace policies to address the change in the definition of spouse.

Unlike some changes in the law, this one will not wait for Texas employers to catch up. Travis County had already issued 54 licenses to same sex couples by noon today. The Austin American-Statesman reported that clerks in Dallas, Bexar, Tarrant, Midland, McLennan and El Paso counties also began issuing licenses to same-sex couples and judges have already started marrying same-sex couples today in Texas.

Here are some of the employment law considerations that businesses need to address immediately: Continue reading How Texas Employers Should Respond to Marriage Decision →

Affordable Care Act is the Law

Benefits, Medical, , , , ,

The United States Supreme Court confirmed today that the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is the law and is here to stay. In deciding King v. Burwell, the Court for the second time upheld the health care law that was passed by Congress in 2010.

What does King v. Burwell mean for employers? Not much. As an employer, you just have to keep soldiering on to make the ACA work in your business, just as you have been doing for the last several years.

Of course, how big an issue the ACA is to you as an employer depends on the size of your workplace. To apply the ACA, you as the employer have to count your employees and determine how many “full-time equivalents” that you employ. Under the ACA, a full-time employee is one who is employed an average of at least 30 hours per week.

The Affordable Care Act’s mandate, requiring employers to provide health insurance to employees or face a penalty, does not apply to employers with less than the equivalent of 50 full-time employees. This is the small business exemption to the mandate and means that small businesses can choose whether to provide health insurance at all.

If you have between 50 and 99 full-time equivalent employees, you have been getting ready for the Affordable Care Act this year, since 2016 is the year that you are required to provide your full-time employees with affordable health insurance coverage or pay a potentially substantial penalty.  You are probably still working out the kinks in your system of counting hours, determining who is full-time, setting measurement periods. Next year you will be getting employees signed up and answering endless questions from your employees about their coverage.

If you have 100 or more full-time equivalent employees, then 2015 is the first year you have been required to  provide health insurance to your employees or pay a penalty. The penalty is imposed if at least one of your full-time employees receives a subsidy to purchase coverage in the individual Marketplace. So the subsidies that the Supreme Court upheld in King v. Burwell today will determine if you as an employer get penalized.

But at least you have a little margin for error this year if you employ 100 or more people. In 2015, you only have to offer coverage to at least 70 percent of full-time employees, rather than 95 percent which will begin in 2016.

There are other changes on the horizon for you as an employer in dealing with the ACA. Continue reading Affordable Care Act is the Law →

Counting Consequences

Benefits, Discrimination, Management,

One of the things I admire most about many of my clients in the Texas Panhandle is their entrepreneurial spirit. Many of them have created and nurtured several businesses to success. But there is a downside to owning many businesses: your employment headaches increase.

For example, if you have one employee who works for two of your businesses, such as a receptionist at your main office, you might be paying that employee out of two business accounts and not realizing that you have overtime obligations to that employee. Your two businesses may be “joint employers” of this receptionist if there are common officers or directors of the companies and/or there are common insurance, pension or payroll systems. If so, you must take the hours that receptionist works at all of your businesses into account when determining whether that employee should be paid overtime for working more than 40 hours in any one workweek.

Another consequence of owning more than one business is that the number of employees working at all of your businesses may need to be combined when deciding whether you have to comply with various federal employment laws, such as Title VII (which goes into effect when you employ 15 employees), the Americans with Disabilities Act (which requires 15 employees), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (which requires 20 employees), the Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires that you provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to your employees if you have 50 names on the payroll, or the Affordable Care Act, which mandates that employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees provide health insurance to their employees beginning in 2015 or face substantial penalties.

The Department of Labor and the EEOC will apply an “integrated employer” test to determine whether separate but related businesses are deemed to be a single entity for counting the number of employees (names on the payroll) to determine whether you are liable for discrimination under Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA or the FMLA. This test looks at four factors: common management of the two companies, interrelation between the operations of the companies, central operation of labor relations and some degree of common ownership or financial control. If your companies are integrated, you need to count names on all of your payrolls to determine if you need to be complying with these federal laws.

The Affordable Care Act counts employees a little differently and combines related companies differently also. The ACA requires that related entities count employees as if they were employed by one business to determine if you employ at least 50 full-time equivalent employees (and remember that the definition of “full-time” under the ACA is 30 hours per week). If your related companies all together employ 50 FTEs or more, you will have to provide your employees with health insurance beginning in 2015 or be ready to pay the penalties imposed on employers who do not comply. The ACA combines into one employer related entities such as parents and their subsidiaries, brother/sister companies where the same five people or entities own the equity in two or more companies, and affiliated service groups such as law firms, accounting firms, civic organizations and temporary staffing companies that are linked by at least some ownership (the statute refers to a 10% threshold) and closely collaborate in the services they provide.

Accurately counting the number of employees you employ when you own more than one business can be much more complicated than it initially appears. But getting that accurate count is essential to operating your businesses legally.