Whether you have a bookkeeping vendor or a payroll service assisting you with your Ohio BWC True Up reporting, please remember to complete the report online by August 15th. If you report wages in-house make sure your you are using Medicare eligible wages and not just gross wages. You will need to subtract out money employees paid towards Section 125 benefits such as medical insurance, daycare, and parking. Also make sure you are looking at Ohio BWC’s additional reporting rules such as officer minimums and maximums and other maximums for employees in the construction industry. Unique to this year for the Pandemic, is you also can remove any Covid pay wages that you received credit back from the IRS because of the FFCRA passed early in the pandemic. On top of this if employers sent employees home to telework for extended periods of time, they can report those wages for that time under code 8871-Clerical Telecommuters if the job duties remained clerical in nature.
Many payroll services will go further than just providing a report. Some will provide additional services that include paying the installments on the client’s behalf, filing the end of year True Up, or doing both. Many large national payroll services have set up automated bulk processes with the Ohio BWC for the payments part, but no longer get involved in processing the True Up or making True up payments online. This puts the most difficult part of the process back on the employer to figure out. This automated process for installments can also lead to underpayments and lapse in coverage if something like a BWC audit or an experience transfer from an acquisition occurs. Lapsed coverage or not doing the True Up can lead to increased rates by being kicked out of group programs. If an injury occurs while lapsed, the employer could be charged the total cost of that claim dollar for dollar. You need to make sure you have a good partner in place to avoid any of these things happening to you.
Payroll Partners goes further than most payroll providers to ensure this process is done correctly every time. We treat the Ohio BWC premium much like all your other payroll taxes. Payroll Partners establishes rep status with BWC to get rates during initial set and at the beginning of every policy year. We pull your premium amount exactly by taxable wages with every payroll based on your assigned rates per job code. We can program into our system which employees are subject to the caps for reporting as well. Payroll Partners in house tax department will manually log into your BWC account monthly and ensure all installments are paid up to date. Even if your payment process is set up bi-monthly or quarterly, we still log in every month just in case you had charges outside of your normal installment schedule due to account activity such as audits or a group program rerate. At the end of the year, Payroll Partners will complete online True Ups and pay any amounts due to the BWC immediately, since we have been collecting those founds throughout the year with payroll through a true pay as you go model.
For additional help please contact Matt Flynn at Payroll Partners mflynn@payroll.partner (937)829-5581.
www.payrollpartners.net