How to compensate employees for the hours spent traveling on business is becoming one of the major concerns of the payroll department today.  Many recent changes in federal and state wage and hour rules as well as economic pressures on employers and employees alike can create a situation that can practically invite noncompliance lawsuits—especially if the travel time results in overtime being owed to the employee.

But it isn’t just the DOL (Department of Labor) that is interested in travel pay. The IRS (Internal Revenue Services) also has strict regulations on when employees can be paid for travel expenses without it being considered wages. Does the company use the per diem method to reimburse employees or the accountable plan method?  Or do you even need to have a method when it comes to reimbursing employees for travel expenses?

Information covered in the presentation:

• Travel pay requirements—What you must pay for and why
• Best practices for paying travel pay correctly
• Which employees have to be paid…and when
• Payroll Compliance and travel pay issues—keeping wage and hour claims at bay
• What to do when federal and state laws conflict and handling multiple state conflict issues
• How travel pay affects overtime calculations—travel pay differences for exempt and non-exempt employees
• Special circumstances that may require travel payment
• What are per diems
• When travel payments are taxable
• Accountable and nonaccountable plans

This webinar concentrates on the requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of when to pay employees for traveling.  It will discuss when commuting is considered hours worked and when is it not. It will discuss how to determine if an employee is called out on an “emergency” and therefore must be paid for traveling a substantial distance or when advance notice has been given and is not required to be included in hours worked. It will cover if traveling outside of the employee’s normal work hours constitutes hours worked or not.  What if the employee travels overnight or all in a day’s work—which one must be paid for and why? And it will discuss the various state requirements when they differ from the federal.

Who will Benefit:

• Payroll Professionals
• Human Resources
• Accounting Personnel
• Business Owners
• Lawmakers
• Attorneys, or any individual or entity that must deal with the complexities and technicalities within the payroll process