Paris Accounting Corp

Practice limited to business consulting and tax resolution

Phone: 718-281-0200
Email: [email protected]
PO Box 604993, Bayside, NY 11360
Profitability Consultant and CPA

by

NYC ever changing employer/employee rules and regulations.

Today’s blog on employer/employee rules in NYC comes after spending 6 business days at CPA seminars updating tax changes and learning recent events that affect my clients.

NYC has been making more employer/employee rules and regulations.

know the rules in NYC

Not only should EVERY employer have a time clock, the new employer/employee rules make it a crime for an employer to not have a time clock because it is a general disregard for the requirement to keep employee records.  In one case, a restaurant was indeed considered criminal for no time cards.

More importantly, the NYS Dept. of Labor, an agency for a long time considering all employers guilty and all employees innocent turn against any employer with inadequate records.

An employee fired for just reasons, for example stealing, can still sue a prior employer for not paying over time, or not paying all wages as required, and without time cards, the employer will lose the suit.  Regardless of the any outcome, the burden of proof from employee claims always falls on the employer.  Beware.

As a clarification, any employee who works 10 hours in any 1 day is to be paid for 11 hours.  [yes this is a real rule]

However, the additional hour of pay is not required to be at the employee pay rate, it is required at minimum wage only.  So a $17/hour employee working 10 hours need only be paid $9 per hour for the non-worked 11th hour.  This is contrary to what many employers believed, that the extra hour was at the employee’s rate of pay.

NYC-Wage-Rates

NYC wages for restaurant waiters and busboys [tipped employees] is increasing from $5 per hour to $7.50 per hour.  I can’t remember the last time anyone got a 50% increase in wages.  And, most importantly, the restaurant wage increase takes place 12/31 to include new year’s eve in the new rates.

Lastly, NYC requires 5 days personal/sick/vacation time to all employees.  The regulations made this effective April 2014.  Any employee who works 80 hours in a year starts to accrue time off.  1 hour for every 30 hours worked.

Harlan Kahn CPA

 

Business owners: Download our free report “Do you own your own business or does it own YOU!” to get your business moving in the right direction.

Share This:

by

Employees and Overtime

A recent NYS law allows for employees to sue their employers for lost wages and unpaid overtime.

In fact, not only can the employee sue, but if the employer should pay as little as $1 to the employee in settlement, the employer is responsible for the employee’s lawyer fees.

I would think most employers would be outraged by what I just wrote.  And they should be.  Yet this does not change the law, challenge the law or stop what has happened due to this law.

French RestaurantI have several restaurant clients and each restaurant has been hit with a law suit at least 1 time.  I want to emphasize this so that every employer will protect themselves from this law and frivolous suits filed by former employee’s and their lawyers.

The law is designed to protect employees.  Employees generally do not have the funds to hire lawyers to sue employers.  This law, creates a new business for attorneys.  Attorneys are now approaching past restaurant employees willing to argue on their behalf for lost overtime and regular wages.

You see, if you are not management with the authority to hire and fire staff, you are required to be paid by the hour.  Which means if you work more than 40 hours in a week, or more than 10 hours in a day, you are entitled to overtime rates [which starts at 150% of regular wages].

An employer’s only recourse against a suit about lost wages or lost overtime wages are TIME CARDS or time records [as many time clocks are now digital].  The number of cases are mounting and the IRS has admitted that 50% of all employer/employee cases come from restaurants, and so the IRS targets restaurants as do suing lawyers.  But this law of pay and overtime pay affects ALL BUSINESSES.

Just this week we have a client who is considering closing his business and we have come to find out he never used a time clock.  So even after the business is closed and gone, for up to six years, his secretary could sue for overtime and he would have no records to defend the fact that overtime never happened.  Such is the case with a martial arts gym that raised someone’s salary.

I happen to mention we inserted the new pay rate and an overtime rate.  The owner was thinking, I never have overtime for my employees.  Great!  How can you prove it?  Do you have a time clock and retain the time clock records for at least 6 years?

Harlan S. Kahn CPA
Paris Accounting Corp
www.parisac.com

 

Additional Resources: Do you own your business or does it own you? Don’t leave without downloading our free whitepaper here. Revive the dream.

Share This: