Recovering wage overpayments can be a time-consuming and sometimes challenging process for payroll professionals. Accuracy is an essential element in the payroll process, but error-free payrolls are rare. State laws governing the recovery of overpayments and adjustment of related taxes often vary from federal rules and from state to state. Recovery may be difficult or cause hardship for employees, particularly in termination cases.

Understanding your compliance obligations and responsibilities to your employees is critical. Recovery of an overpayment may also create reporting and recordkeeping issues related to taxes and fringe benefits. The use of improper or illegal recovery methods may lead to the imposition of fines, penalties, or other sanctions on an employer. 

This webinar from expert Patrick A Haggerty will give participants the tools to analyze all types of employee overpayments and when overpayments may be recovered using payroll deduction and when payroll deduction may be limited by state or federal wage and hour laws or when employee consent is required.

Wage overpayments can be a source of significant cost in terms of staff time spent on analysis and correction. Compliance issues and errors made during the correction process can add to the costs. In the case of overpayments, employers must abide by federal and state wage laws, and cannot simply deduct money from an employee’s paycheck. In some cases, this could result in a violation of minimum wage or overtime rules or the requirement to pay full salaries to exempt employees. In a number of states, employers may not recover wage overpayments through payroll deduction without the consent of the employee.

In this session expert speaker, Patrick Haggerty will discuss the issues that arise when an overpayment has been made. It will address the requirements that must be followed to help the payroll department establish a clear policy on handling overpayments that keep it in compliance with federal and state laws and regulations.