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Do you run a small business? If you do, wouldn’t it be great to allow your employees a legal way to not have to pay all their payroll taxes? If this is your desire, then your business needs a Section 125 POP plan. Do you have a Section 125 POP plan to offer to your employees? Maybe you’ve heard of a Section 125 POP plan but aren’t quite sure what it means and how it works.
It’s important to understand what’s involved in a Section 125 POP plan because it gives you the opportunity to offer your employees benefits as well as provides a significant tax break. In other words, it benefits both you and your employees. Here’s what you need to know about a Section 125 POP plan, along with a few considerations and warnings.
First, let’s clarify what we mean by a Section 125 plan. Put simply, a Section 125 plan, which is also known as Section 125 cafeteria plan, is a benefits plan that lets your employees use tax-free dollars to pay for their own health insurance premiums. Its “cafeteria plan” nickname comes from the fact that employees can select from a menu of choices for their benefits, such as medical, vision, dental and others, or they can choose to receive cash for the same amount.
A Section 125 POP (Premiums Only Plan) is one of the three benefits making up a Section 125 cafeteria plan. The other two benefits are the FSA (Flexible Spending Account) and DCAP (Dependent Care Assistant Plan).
As a small business owner, you have the option of using just one of these benefits or a combination of them. You can also implement all three of them. A POP plan, which the simplest and most basic of the three benefits, gives employees the choice of setting aside a part of their pre-tax income for paying for their health insurance premium contribution.
Regardless of the size of your business, thanks to a Section 125 POP plan, there’s an effective way of reducing payroll tax expenses. What’s more, it gives your employees more take-home pay without having to sacrifice their benefits. Thus, if you want to offer your eligible employees a tax benefit but don’t want to offer them a full FSA, a Section 125 POP plan is an ideal solution.
For more information on a Section 125 POP plan and for all your commercial insurance needs, visit InsureYourCompany.com. Although we work with a wide range of businesses, our main focus is on single-person LLC’s in tech and small New Jersey companies. Please contact us.
In 2014, when the Affordable Care Act took effect, it didn’t just aim to make healthcare more affordable. The ACA also included provision for ensuring that everyone had health insurance and failing to acquire insurance could lead to heavy penalties. According to this policy, individuals who failed to carry health insurance were typically hit by penalties when they filed their taxes: $695 for each adult in the household, or 2.5% of the household’s income (whichever number was greater). This was intended to give citizens incentive to acquire health insurance, whether through their companies or through private insurance providers.
As of January 1, 2019, individuals who do not carry health insurance will no longer be penalized for that lack of coverage. This means that many people who have struggled to pay expensive health insurance premiums may breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, the new rules of the ACA does not necessarily mean that people do not need health insurance. In fact, health insurance may become more necessary than ever.
Even with the changes to the ACA, it’s still important to carry health insurance. Whether you’re considering the need for insurance for yourself or offering it for your employees. There are several key factors that you should consider before deciding that you no longer need health insurance.
Catastrophe can strike anyone. You never know when a serious accident will occur: an auto accident that leaves you with severe injuries, an unexpected illness, or a simple slip and fall that causes more damage than you expected. As you age, your healthcare-related costs may continue to increase. At the very least, it’s important to carry minimum coverage so that if catastrophe does strike, it won’t lead to financial disaster.
You shouldn’t have to debate the cost of needed medical care. Across the United States, many adults struggle every day to decide whether or not they can afford desperately-needed healthcare. With health insurance, it’s easier to get the care that’s needed without going into debt or going without other necessary things.
You want to keep employees on the job. Employees without health insurance are less likely to seek treatment for illnesses and more likely to put off visiting the doctor over so-called minor injuries. This can lead to significantly more lost time at work since employees will need more time in order to recover when they don’t have medical professionals involved. Not only that, neglecting their health can cause employees to need more sick hours over the course of the year. An employee could also come into work sick, decreasing productivity and potentially spreading illness throughout the office. Offering health insurance, on the other hand, helps employees get the prompt treatment they need when they’re ill. This will be able to decrease the duration of common illnesses and increase employees’ overall health and wellness.
With or without the Affordable Care Act, you need insurance to protect yourself and your family. Health insurance is the only way to ensure that if you are sick or injured, you’re able to get the medical care you need. If you’re a small business owner or manager, consider how offering health insurance to your employees can make it easier for them to handle their expenses and get the care that they need. Need help managing those policies or finding a policy that will fit your financial needs as well as your health needs? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your company step up to the table and offer the health insurance your employees need.
Sick leave is time off work granted to an individual worker to address his/her health or that of a close relative (such as a spouse or child). New Jersey is one of ten states (plus Washington, D.C.) that mandates employers provide paid sick leave to its workers. The New Jersey Earned Sick Leave Law, effective on October 29, 2018, declares employees accumulate one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours they work with a maximum of 40 hours annually.
In New Jersey, a covered employee is typically one who works for compensation from an employer. It does not include those working under collective bargaining agreements in the construction industry or per diem (per day) healthcare workers. The law also excludes public employees who are already covered by sick leave benefits under President Obama’s 2015 Executive Order. A worker becomes eligible for earned sick leave after employment of more than 120 days.
There are a few extremely specific situations in which an employee is allowed to use paid sick leave for something other than illness or injury. The first of these involves victims of domestic violence to deal with issues such as relocation, legal aid, and therapy. The second circumstance is when an employer must close the workplace due to a public health emergency (sick leave can also be used if such an emergency closes the school or child care facility of an employee’s child or children). Sick leave is also available when a worker needs to attend a conference or a meeting regarding his/her child’s education. Finally, sick leave also covers conferences or meetings regarding the care of the employee’s child when that child has a health condition(s) or disability.
Employers are encouraged to contact us for additional information regarding employment regulations and protecting operations.
(taken from a teenager in the early 2000’s)
Some families have traditions of playing football outside on Thanksgiving Day, breaking the wishbone, or just gathering around the table saying what they are thankful about. My family participated in a few of those too, but there was nothing more daring and magical than attending the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If you are one of the brave attempting to see the parade in person, here are my hard earned tips for having a successful experience!
In order to beat the herds of traffic and crowds of excited teeny boppers, wake up as early as possible. We were coming from Central New Jersey, so it took us about an hour to get into the city. If you wake up early you will be able to avoid traffic and the lines of people crowding along the street. People will be lined up along the parade route at 6:30 am, even though the parade doesn’t start until 9. Just keep in mind that if you do go early, it can be quite cold, which leads to the next tip.
Before you leave, throw on 2-3 pairs of pants, extra socks, and shirts. Scarves and hats are essential too. The aim here is to add enough layers to look and feel as much like the Michelin man as possible. Attending an outdoor event in the fall or winter requires layers. They will keep you warm from the elements, and separated from the other thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder trying to get a look at Snoopy.
Staying warm also involves drinking hot liquids. As your family is out the door, make sure everyone has their favorite thermos filled with hot cocoa (a personal favorite; my mom had coffee in hers). But whatever you drink, be careful and try not to spill hot cocoa on your bare hand while it’s still ridiculously hot, like my brother managed to do! We asked the first officer we saw for some band-aids to cover the burn and he gave us another tip that actually worked. He suggested putting ketchup on the burn. So we were off looking for ketchup packets for my brother’s hand. I digress.
Although you may want to keep your thermos close by, keep in mind that you don’t want to drink too much of it. Bathrooms are sparse and you don’t want to pay $10 for another hot cocoa at Roxy’s just to use their bathroom. Keep in mind, your mom will be upset and will remember that $8 purchase years later. So try to sip sparingly and avoid too many bathroom trips.
It’s essential to keep warm on what might be a day of freezing temperatures. Don’t forget to open those hand and feet warmers and stuff them into your shoes and gloves. This is the currency of friendship from strangers later in the day, you will find out. Lots of hand warmers being passed around by unfamiliar yet ecstatic faces. The key to a happy trip is, stay warm! The hand and feet warmers last surprisingly long.
If your mom is a talker like mine, you will easily make friends from across the country and even around the globe who have found spots on the curb near you. You’ve got the wide-eyed southern folk who are as cold and yet happy as can be. The jaded New Yorkers who have to fold up chairs and are prepared to the T. Everyone seems to come together in trying to guess which celebrities will be coming out first. It’s a very communal type of event if you haven’t picked up on that yet.
Everything from waking up early, to the ketchup burn, to the lack of bathrooms is all worth it when your 12-year-old heart melts as the Backstreet Boys pass you 200 feet away, singing on a moving float (I swear, Christina Aguilera waved directly and at me one year too!) Enjoy every moment from the celebrities, to the balloons and the marching bands as well. As the parade goes on, you try to guess who is lip-syncing and who’s not (hint: they are probably all lip-syncing). At the end you want to beat the exiting crowd, so once you hear Jingle Bells and see Santa on his sleigh, you make a b-line for the nearest garage where your car is parked.
My last tip would be to make a promise to yourself that next year you’ll find friends with an apartment view of the parade. Years later, we ended up making some friends who had a nice apartment view of the parade. We got to sleep in, didn’t worry about burns or bathrooms, and had an amazing view of the route. But I must admit it’s just not the same experience as roughing it in the cold with the ones you love.
Do you know your insurance score? If you’re like many people, you may not even realize that you have an insurance score, but this is a critical factor for determining insurance premiums. Here’s what you need to know about insurance scores, along with how to improve a negative score.
Simply put, an insurance score, which is also known as an insurance credit score, is a numerical ranking or point system. Based on various factors, insurance scores are used by insurance companies for predicting risk and underwriting decisions, besides deciding how much to charge for premiums.
Your insurance score is the main factor for determining the total premium you need to pay for insurance policies, which includes health, auto, homeowners and auto policies. Insurance companies use several types of property claim databases, such as CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange), A-PLUS (Automated Property Loss Underwriting System) and others to come up with an insurance score.
Maybe you’re thinking that an insurance score is the same as a credit score, but they’re different. Insurance scores pertain to odds of having another insurance claim or accident in the future, rather than being based on your ability to repay borrowed money, which is a credit score. In other words, your insurance score focuses more on stability issues, while your credit score emphasizes the amount of credit that you’re able to manage.
A favorable insurance score is important because it can mean paying lower premiums. On the other hand, having a lower score can show that you belong to a group that is more prone to having future claims. However, if your credit history has some items that are below average, you may still have the chance of obtaining a lower rate since below-average factors, as well as above-average factors, are evaluated.
To get a positive insurance score, you need to have a good credit history. Another factor linked with a favorable score is not having any late payments or past due accounts. Furthermore, it helps to have several open accounts that are in good standing, in addition to a low use of available credit.
If you have too many past-due payments and/or collection accounts, you probably have a negative insurance score. Also, having several recent applications for credit can be a reason for an unfavorable score. Using too much available credit can be another factor for a bad insurance score. Other problems that can negatively affect your insurance score are liens, foreclosures, and bankruptcies.
If you do have a low insurance score, take heart. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to improve your score, which can lead to lower insurance premiums.
Some information about you cannot be used when coming up with a credit score, such as:
Questions? Visit the insurance pros at InsureYourCompany.com where we work with a wide range of business but mostly focus on single-person LLC’s in tech and small New Jersey businesses. Please contact us.
In your career, it is crucial to work with your colleagues as a team in order to have a successful business. The advantage of working together and the ability to have cooperation amongst each other as a unit is that each person is able to contribute their different experience and views. This then makes the project/task at hand the best it can be! The most successful people in the world will always have a team around them to bounce ideas off of, brainstorm, work through projects together and help to overall expand each other’s capabilities.
We previously discussed definite aim, in order to be cooperative you must use your definite aim and write it down. This will create a habit to build your cooperation between your conscious and subconscious mind, to ultimately have you be successful.
Nonprofit organizations play a huge role in helping society. Even though their main goal is to help people, instead of creating a profit, they’re still considered small businesses. This means their people and assets need to be protected. Do you run a nonprofit organization? If you do, you probably don’t have a large number of funds in your operating budget to pay for unforeseen disasters or lawsuits that could lead to bankruptcy. That’s why it is so important that you get the correct insurance coverage to protect your nonprofit organization. Here are six of the most important commercial insurance policies you’ll need for operating your nonprofit organization.
This type of policy, which is also known as a “commercial general liability” (CGL) policy covers your nonprofit organization against claims involving someone suffering from bodily injuries, such as “slip-and-fall” cases. It also includes different types of property damage that can occur from your premises as well as from your products or operations.
A general liability policy covers a nonprofit organization for any damages that are required to pay to customers, visitors, associates or whoever is hurt on your business property. However, these types of insurance policies do not apply to the employees at a nonprofit since they’re covered separately by workers’ compensation.
Property insurance protects your building and the stuff your nonprofit organization owns. As a nonprofit organization, you may not have a lot of business property. However, it’s still critical that you get property insurance, considering that some of the worst insurance claims are linked to property, such as vandalism or burst pipes in an office.
If you rent, property insurance still covers any items that belong to your organization, such as equipment, furniture, inventory, supplies, machinery, lighting systems, carpeting, and other fixtures and belongings, that could be damaged or lost from theft or natural disasters. These include earthquakes, fires, storms or other catastrophic events.
Auto liability insurance is required if the people working for you, including volunteers, use vehicles, which includes their own vehicles. It covers injuries caused by a driver to people and property when working for the nonprofit organization. What’s more, you may live in a state that requires additional auto insurance, which includes PIP (personal injury protection) and UM/UIM (uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage).
Directors and Officers (D & O) Insurance cover the directors and officers (which typically includes volunteers) of a nonprofit organization. Consider how they could mismanage a nonprofit’s finances or cause fraud. When this occurs, you need to have the right coverage to defend them, besides cover the cost for financial damages. Some claims are not covered in a D & O policy, such as damages from fraudulent or criminal behavior. Another example is claiming from one director of another director.
This type of coverage, which is like D & O insurance, is also known as “errors and omissions” insurance. It provides protection against liabilities that are caused by an organization being mismanaged, besides other types of claims that can occur at a workplace, such as sexual harassment or discrimination. In addition to covering directors and officers, it also covers a nonprofit’s staff and volunteers.
Unfortunately, cyber theft is occurring more and more with nonprofits these days, just as it is with other commercial businesses. Consider how cyber thieves can steal donor and employee data from computer servers of nonprofit computers. Cyber liability insurance also covers paper document exposure.
For all your insurance needs, you can depend on the insurance specialists at InsureYourCompany.com. Although we work with a wide range of businesses, we mainly focus on single-person LLC’s in tech and small New Jersey businesses. Please contact us and find out more about our many products.
Insurance is a way for us to ensure our loved ones are provided for in case of an unexpected illness, accident, injury or even death. For employers providing a group plan for their dedicated workers often come with many questions about continued coverage, eligibility, exceptions, exclusions and more. When it comes to covering dependent children, changes in the law recently extended coverage for kids up to twenty-six years of age.
During the Obama administration, part of the PPACA (Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare) increased the age of minor dependents to remain covered under their parent’s plan through their college years. Perhaps meant to extend healthcare for youngsters getting a higher education, according to provisions under the law, dependents can remain on their parent’s policy even if they:
In this case, dependent children don’t necessarily need to be biological offspring of the parents. They also include those who have been legally adopted, stepchildren and those kids dependent upon their future parents for support during the adoption process. However, coverage does not extend to grandchildren or children-in-law (or those from spouses of dependent children).
In some cases, the insured (especially those covered by specialty groups like Unions or large corporations) may be denied benefits and eligibility for their dependents under special circumstances. For example, if the child in question has the opportunity to enroll in an alternative insurance plan through their employer at zero or low cost to the dependent in question, the provider could require them to take this option.
Other restrictions may include certain enrollment dates that may fall during a specific time of the year. Events such as a marriage, divorce, legal separation or death may come with an expiration date thirty days after this type of change has occurred. According to an excerpt from a notice sent to California small employer groups by a major insurer:
“Employees who want to add children who are younger than 26 years old to their health plan have a one-time special enrollment right under the law. This enrollment right applies to adult children under 26 who were denied coverage in the past because they exceeded the maximum dependent age, or who were enrolled and lost coverage because they reached the maximum dependent age under your policy. The special enrollment right must last for at least 30 days even if your open enrollment period is less than 30 days.”
If a twenty-something dependent is already covered, shouldn’t be anything in order to continue coverage. If parents don’t wish to protect their adult children with coverage under the age of twenty-six, they should contact their provider immediately. It’s important for business owners to be aware of the law when it comes to how they are legally insuring employees, their spouses, and dependent children both today and in the future.
As a small business owner, it’s difficult enough (if not impossible) to keep up with all the changes in policies, procedures and current laws when running a profitable company. Wading through all the paperwork and legal mumbo-jumbo involved with new or repealed insurance provisions and regulations is our job and not yours.
Still have questions on details for dependent coverage? Please feel free to contact us at InsureYourCompany.com where we specialize in serving single-person LLC’s and tech industries in New Jersey. We’re experienced in this field and many other industries so we’re happy to assist everyone in the small business spectrum in the Garden State. Give us a call today and we’ll be happy to discuss your options.
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